Sublife Crisis - Chapter 12 (Patreon)

Maybe a decade ago or so, my aunt got me to watch a movie called Defending Your Life.  It has two very cool things in it: one, Rip Torn, and two, a very casual and kind version of an afterlife.  I think it might have influenced me somewhat.

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“That’s where the money is, I’m telling you!  I’ve got eight versions of [Inventory Expansion] and [Pocket Space] running, and it’s never served me wrong!  Logistics.  Cross-world trade!  Now, I can see the look on your face, and I’ll grant you what you’re thinking; no way to backtrack means some pretty poor trade routes, yes?  But the goods are just for seed capital.  [Memorize Blueprint] is where the real cash comes from.  Knowledge.  Take ideas and force them into reality and you can get rich anywhere!”

The man raps his mug down on the bar, sending a small splatter of droplets into the air.  He’s been talking animatedly for three thousand heartbeats, and I’m not sure why.  I shouldn’t have told him we were open.

It’s not that I dislike company, in general.  I just wish that company had come in the form of my friends, and not… this.  There’s two other people in Bastion’s right now; this man with his jacket of sharp lines and thick black material and his almost glistening hair formed into a tube on his head, and the quiet elf I met last time around.  She sips her herbal lemonade like she’s half waking up from a dream; the most communication we’ve had so far is sharing confused glances as we listen to the man ramble.

“It’s the secret.  I’m sure of it.”  He says, presenting his mug for another pour.  I take it with a sympathetic nod of false understanding, and refill it behind the bar as he fumbles in his half-drunken state to pay me.  “It’s… what it wants.”  He adds as he starts gulping from the freshly topped off mug of alcohol.

He doesn’t seem to be doing okay, and after I give him another refill, he just goes quiet.  Not silent, he’s still muttering about knowing the truth of all things and having figured out the pattern of reality.

“Is he well?”  The elf asks me in a whisper, her compound eyes searching the man as he slumps forward onto his elbows.

It’s the most she’s spoken so far at once.

“Oh.  Uh.  No.”  I reply, glancing at the would-be wealthy merchant of worlds.  It’s rude to talk about people in front of them, but he seems to have fully checked out.  “He’s infected with a common memetic parasite.  He’ll live, though he’ll be obsessed with profit margins for a while at least. How’s your drink?”

“…it tastes like a dream I was having.”  Her whisper as she stares down at the cup sounds like masked tears.  “What is it?”

“Lemonade, with some herbs Six got last time I was here.”  I say.  “We met back then.  Do you remember?”

The elf stares at me.  Long enough that I unconsciously find myself checking my heartbeats as I feel the creeping anxiety that I’ve been standing here being examined for a very long time.  She tilts her head a half inch, achingly slowly, but says nothing as she searches my face.

Two kinds of people at my bar, it seems.

The man is starting to crack.  He’s objective-oriented.  Not a bad thing at all, when you’ve got an objective to hit.  But it’s clear he’s having a hard time adapting to living forever.  He hasn’t said how many lives he’s experienced so far, but it doesn’t really matter.  The between is paradoxically both excellent at providing feedback, and terrible at giving you anything to aim for.  This man is almost certainly suffering, having to guess at and extrapolate what will be recognized as an accomplishment worthy of reward.  So he’s responding by diving further into what he already knows works; if he can just make enough money, maybe the between itself will…

Well, I’ve never heard anyone adequately express what they thought would happen next.  But then, I suppose that’s how religions tend to work.  The whole point is that whatever is next is more than we can understand now.  Being able to articulate it would be a point against belief, really.

The woman, in contrast, is only just waking up.  Natural immortals, elves in particular, have a problem with this.  She’s lived forever, and then died, and lived another life, but that life was almost certainly as a human.  Human is the most common.  And thirty to sixty years… well, that’s a couple cycles to an elf.  That’s nothing.  But now, she’s here again; lived, died, back to the between.  And elves aren’t stupid, it’s just…

I mean, dying is confusing.  Especially the first time.  Probably more so if you think you’re just having a mild hallucination.

“I saw you in a dream.”  The elf says, her voice rising to a tone between a mutter and a whisper.  Elf voices are hard to describe sometimes; beautiful isn’t the word I’d use so much as haunting.  She speaks with a kind of weight that is hard to ignore, even when she is barely speaking at all.

I shrug, and try to not let the words hit me with too much force.  “You saw me here.”  I say.

“I’m dreaming.”  She says.  She doesn’t say it with very much conviction this time.  What feels like a million heartbeats later but is actually only about thirty, her eyes leave my face and look down into the glass she has a strong grip on.  I watch her take another sip, watch her examine the flavor all over again, her face tasting the mixed sour and sweet herbal concoction for what probably feels like the first time for her, for the tenth or twentieth time today.

I sigh, and then feel bad about feeling bad.  Not everyone can be emotionally available all the time.

But I wish I had someone to talk to that was.

It’s selfish of me.  But I am so rarely truly selfish, that I think it’s okay to think I’ve earned a few wishes.  There’s a sort of insurmountable challenge in trying to connect with people who aren’t even acknowledging your shared reality, much less thinking clearly about it.

That challenge amuses me sometimes when I have my friends around.  But when I’m alone, it goes from being a game to play between our other shared activities, to an actual barrier.  A wall between myself and my form of existential satisfaction, that I cannot climb no matter how many ales or lemonades I serve it.

It’s not even that surprising, really.  I’ve lived lives where plenty of people - myself included - had hobbies that were hard fought survival skills from other worlds.  Forging a sword is sometimes the difference between life and death, and other times the difference between getting a good commission rating from someone putting together a costume.

That, actually, is something that I find over and over here in the between; there are echoes of metaphor and event from life to life, and here into the place nested inside our deaths.  It shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose.  The existence of the between at all is somewhat absurd, with how it has things like beer and chairs.  I shouldn’t be shocked that it also has mirrored metaphors.

This type of thinking isn’t my strong suit.  Not here.  Oh, in every life, I find time for it.  Especially when I’m a teenager.  Human teenagers with free time, I think, produce some kind of special brain chemical that makes nervously pacing around and thinking about deep  things somehow a compulsion.  But here in the between, I much prefer to simply be comfortable content and occupied.

I can’t do that though, with a drunk entrepreneur and a sleepy elf.  And I’m not leaving the bar unattended with someone who I suspect would willingly drink the bottle of literal poison that either Mark or Six helpfully labeled ‘dangerous poison do not drink’.

Why do we have this bottle?  Not just ‘why do we keep this around’, but actually, where did this come from?  I roll the green glass around in my palm, cool to the touch, the rough paper of the label stuck to it with some kind of adhesive that I won’t guess at.  It’s not an inventory item.  It doesn’t have any helpful between information on what it does.  I could dig through my own inventory for an [Identify], but that would require rearranging the aura that I just got ordered the way I want it for next life.

My inventory doesn’t sort itself.  And I’ve accumulated a lot of junk in my lives.  I sell a lot of it these days, but some things I want to keep for sentimental reasons, or just because I might need them.  But I never ended up with a [Sort] or an [Index] like Ellin or Jules have, or the coveted [Predictive Soul Searching] that Molly never removes from her perk rotation.  This makes it a bit of a pain to rearrange things sometimes.  And I could work around it, but I don’t actually care that much because my upgrades aren’t a big focus of my existence for me.

Also small mysteries are just fun.  The nagging question of why did we get this asked of a bottle of poison is silly, and I find myself with a goofy grin on my face and shakes of silent laughter in my shoulders as I try to process it.  I uncork the bottle and sniff it.  It smells like poison.  This doesn’t help me understand anything.

I consider asking the merchant if he wants to try it.  I know it won’t kill him, that’s not a thing here.  But maybe it would be an interesting experience.  I bet I could sell him on it if I pitched it as something marketable, but I’ve never actually been able to emotionally engage with business in most of my lives, and so I doubt I’d come across as convincing.

The bottle goes back under the counter, next to the mixers and the crystal pitchers that we use when we don’t want to keep running back behind the bar for every drink during board game sessions.  The sight gives me pause, and I find myself bending down again to move the bottle to another shelf that has Six’s herb box along with a stack of empty snack food bowls.  No.  No, that’s not right either.

Do we have anywhere I can set the dangerous-poison-do-not-drink that isn’t next to food, or something that we eat food out of?  I know it can’t kill me, and that this fake body is resistant to whatever pain or damage it might cause anyway.  But… this is not a sealed bottle. And there’s lifetimes of learned habit that make me feel a deep ingrained trepidation when I consider letting it sit next to the vessels I pour my drinks out of.

Eventually, I take a brief leave of my post at the bar to carry the bottle up the metal steps to the library, so I can leave it at the top of one of the bookshelves.  There are two possible outcomes here; either someone will ask me where it is soon, and I’ll get my answer, or else it will sit here for several hundred subjective years and long after I’ve forgotten about it someone will find it, dust off the non-existent dust that doesn’t form in the between, and ask about it.  And the poison will do its job as I die laughing.

We all have our own ways of expressing faith in what is real.  Personally, I like to show my faith by casting gifts into the future for a version of myself that I might not even recognize to find.  We’re all in conversation with ourselves, even within a single life we speak ideas and thoughts between different versions of who we are, who we want to be, who we could have been, and who we think we’ll ‘end up as’.

It’s a bit different for me, since there is no ‘end up’.  And here in the between, it’s not always possible to leave myself notes.  Journals, diaries, ways to record our own history, these things are precious treasures that the between gives out as some of the highest awards.  I think it is telling of something that it treats mementos and souvenirs as prizes to be sought.  I don’t know what it’s telling of, but the end effect is that we can often change, and not really know it.  It’s easy enough to forget where you came from with only fifty years behind you.  When you’re working on a scale of hundreds or thousands, it’s even easier.

That’s why friends are so useful.  Or, well, useful is the wrong word.  That makes it sound like they’re here for utility and nothing else.  Maybe it’s better to say that there’s a side effect of our shared lives, which is that we remember each other.  We carry snapshots of each other’s pasts around, a comparison of what we’ve ended up as.  A way to know if we’ve drifted too far from who we were.

Not that drift is a bad thing, on its own.  People change.  Even endless people like us.  We are always changing.  Everyone does.  The only question is if we’re changing into something we like.  I’ve lost friends here to the dawning horror that they’ve become something unrecognizable and monstrous, people who fall into despair, or worse, simply leave.  When they realize that they don’t care that they’re separated from us by some chasm of an ideological divide, and they leave, and we never see them in Bastion’s again.

Losing people never stops hurting.  Honestly, I don’t think I’d want it to.  That’s one of the reality checks that my friends carry with them.

This is the problem with being alone.  I spend all my time dwelling on this.  On these morose thoughts and sad self-authored poetry.  It’s only a matter of time before I start recalling the faces of everyone I’ve left behind in old lives and weeping.  Because no matter how long I wait for the arrival of friends at Bastion’s, they will never be showing up.

I try to shake it off.  Grounding myself on the rough wood floor and holding back a sigh as I look down at the tops of the heads of the two people sitting at the bar.  It’s a good reminder, in a weird way.  Holding on is hard.  Living is hard.  Keeping myself from turning into a crying mess in an endless suicide loop is hard.  But then I look at the kind of despondency that’s my other option, and all I can think is that I don’t want that.  I don’t want to go mad thinking that hoarding silver is the answer to life, or muddle through a series of lives like they’re false dreams.

I want to live.

I just don’t want to do it alone.

So after I safely store the very dangerous poison between a technical manual on a Craw-7 Air Superiority Fighter Craft, and a children's book about trying to eat the sun, I grab a deck of cards from the library and head back to the bar.

At first, I just lean against the back of the counter, toss the deckbox into nothingness, and idly shuffle.  A mechanical action that keeps my hands busy, but also prevents my mind from drifting.  The noise of cards is sort of unmistakable though; nothing else is quite like it, no matter what the cards are for.  It’s a cathartic motion that also lets me check what I did actually pick up so I can know what game I’m going to try to entice the two people here with.

I’m a bit surprised when the elf looks up at me first.  The merchant is still muttering into his folded arms about inventory management and cross world logistics which are all theoretical at best.  But the elf focuses on the cards in my hands with an intensity she hasn’t shown so far.

“Are you a seeker?”  She asks me in a humming cadence that circles inside my ears like a lost gnat.  “Is that where I am?”

“Maybe.”  I offer her with a quiet smile.  “Tell me, what do seekers do?”

“A seeker is… did I dream them?”  Her voice dips again, and a look of confusion traces across her smooth face.  “A seeker… a seeker uses cards.”  The elf sounds so uncertain, but she’s struggling toward something she half-remembers.  “They tell you who you are.”

I purse my lips and nod at her, my tail flicking back and forth behind me in a sort of agreement.  “Well, I have cards.  And they can help you know who you are, in a small way.”  I offer.  “Would you like to play a game?”

Her eyes cloud over, and she stares at me with naked anxiety.  “I don’t know how.  I have never met a seeker.”

I smile at her, brushing nothing in particular off my bare arm.  “That’s alright.  I haven’t been one long.  Would you like to learn a game?”  She nods at me, slowly, like she isn’t sure.  About either the answer, or her gesture.  I shuffle the cards again, lifetimes of enjoyment of these kind of games giving me an expert touch on the small shapes.  With a deft touch, I fan the deck out in a circle on the bar between us, and flip over one particular card.  “Alright.  This is the crown. The point of the game is to claim it, and then end the hand…”

There’s another trick I’ve learned when it comes to games; a specific tone for explaining rules that sticks in people’s minds.  And, paired with that, just the right volume of voice to use to let the half-drunk merchant sitting two meters away listen in, and have his interest piqued.

It doesn’t take me long to explain the game of Regicide to the elf.  It is, as all tavern games are, somewhat simple and robust.  The rules also don’t get exceptionally complicated for only two people; it’s a game designed to be played with enough people that you can backstab half the table at once and still lose somehow.  I kind of don’t like it, but it’s what I picked up.  After I get a confused nod from the elf, and deal us both of our different hands, we start playing.

It is six moves in that she wins.  I let her do it, and if I do say so myself, it was masterfully done.  It would take an expert at the game to realize that my loss was intentional.  I give her a pleasant grin.  “And you win.”  I say, flipping the crown face up and revealing her victory.

The elf stares at the crown card, the sharp intellect that had been creeping through as we played receding again into a foggy confusion.  “And then what?”  She asks.

“And then you’ve won.”  I say, trying not to laugh.  “It’s a game, the only meaning is what we bring in, and what we find ourselves.”

“What am I supposed to find?”  She whispers, staring at the bar as if she’s asking the cards themselves.

I don’t have a good answer for her.  “That’s a good question!”  I say instead, refilling her lemonade that has gone empty while we fumbled through a learning game of this particular application of cards.  “People find a lot of different things in games like this.  Sometimes it’s as simple as enjoying a small piece of time with someone else.  Other times, you learn something about yourself.  Some people place wagers on the whole thing.  What you find is up to you.”

“We should play again.”  It is the first thing she has said that has a little bit of life and energy in it, and I agree easily.

It is after the eighth move that I start to wonder if she has misunderstood the rules.  After the fourteenth that I am sure of it.  After the twenty first that I reassess, and realize that we are each trying to lose to each other.  I concede six moves after, and take the crown with a shake of my head.

And then the elf surprises me.  “What did you find?”  She asks, without a hint of guile in her face.

“I…” I start to tell her that I didn’t find anything, but that’s not exactly true.  But the thought hasn’t fully crystallized, so I pause, and think quietly to myself.  We have the benefit of time here, and I don’t think she will mind a little silence.  “I find that I do not enjoy games as much when the players are not playing the same game.”  I eventually answer.  “When you began playing for a different objective, it made the game feel invalid, until I also started competing with you under your rules.”  I hum to myself.  “Which, really, is the point of games like this in general.  Competition, but where the rules are open and understood.  It’s meant to be a cleaner reflection of how we compete out in the world.”

“But you won.”  The elf says in her dreamlike voice.  “You should be happy?”

“Oh?”  I smile back at her.  “Is happiness that simple?”

“It was before the dream.”  She whispers.  “Can we play again?”

“And can I get in on it?”  The merchant asks, having been watching with cunning eyes ever since halfway into our second round.  “I’m okay with the wagering thing, too, if anyone wants to stake some marks on it.”

I scoff at him, even as I begin dealing a new set of hands.  “Please.  This is a sacred ritual, a seeking of the self.  It is not gambling.”

He stares at me with open disbelief, flicking a finger against the tube of his hair.  “Oh, come on pretty lady.  I’ve lived at least two lives where gambling was sacred.  Besides, I’m not gonna find anything about myself.  I already know the secrets of the between, even if no one believes me.”

“Well, she needs to find herself.  So no wagers, and you can help, if you want to play.”  I stare him down, and he sighs as he adjusts his coat and switches to a closer stool.  Which I take as agreement, whether he likes it or not.  “Good.”  I finish dealing.  “Now.  Let us learn about ourselves and teach about each other.”  I intone the words of a prayer I learned five lives back.

What I learn, after another two thousand heartbeats and five hands of Regicide, is that neither of these people know how to play card games.  They’re very easy to read, and I don’t think either of them realize that part of the game is about making your opponents drain each other’s resources while you lose nothing.  And yet, we have fun.  In our own ways.

The merchant tries to make it a matter of numbers and potential winnings, half-joking about betting marks or perks on the whole thing.  The elf, who barely understands that this is real, tries to make it a vision quest; looking for something that means anything concrete within the motions.  And I just want to have something to do while I wait.

After another four hands, the merchant concedes early and stands with a groaning stretch.  “Alright ladies.”  He says, his voice coming out in a way that makes me think he has to be intentionally making himself sound slimy.  No one can do it that much by accident.  “My time is almost up.  I’m off again to seek my fortune.  But this was a better vacation than most.  I’ll be back again, if I’m welcome here.”

“Bastion’s is open to you.”  I tell him with a crooked grin.  “If you can find it, and if you’re polite enough.”

“Fair top.”  He tips his head forward.  “Next time, you’ll see.  I’ll be drowning in marks enough to drink you dry and then some.”  I doubt that very much.  But… well, optimizing isn’t something I’m in favor of, but if it’s going to happen, at least this version of it is less horrid.  This man is, if nothing else, passionate about what he’s doing.  “You’ll see.  I’ll crack the secret this time.”  He says with one last desperate attempt to validate his theory.

I’m waving at him one instant, a cocky salute with my own glass of water that I’ve been comfortably sipping on, and then he is gone the next instant.

“Well.  That was…” I turn to the elf, but she’s gone too.

I check my heartbeats.  Three hundred thousand left.  I’m running out of time, and I don’t even know if I’ll be here when my friends arrive.  And now I’m alone again to worry about it.

The glass of water in my hand suddenly feels wrong.  Like a stupid joke.  I fling it across the room, the water flinging itself into nothing as the glass rattles on the wood and rolls under our good table.

Composing myself feels like a waste of time, but I do it anyway, taking deep fake breaths until my heart doesn’t feel like it’s going to try to rip itself out of my throat anytime soon.  Then I find another cup, and pour myself something hallucinogenic that I think is meant to be served in drops on ice.  I fill three fingers of a cup instead, and start drinking.

I hate waiting.  It’s making me feel like someone else.