Sublife Crisis - Chapter 15 (Patreon)

I seriously said "Oh no, I'm late, I'll post in half an hour", and then sat at my computer, stared at it, couldn't figure out what I had sat down for, and then went to bed.  Anyway, here's the chapter!

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“So we’re at the healer, right?  And I’m sitting there, being creepy, because hurt kids who don’t cry are creepy.”  Ellin is telling a story from her last life, and is slightly tipsy.  I know this because she proclaimed it, shortly before tugging me into her lap while she talked.

Ellin talks with her arms a lot.  And since we don’t have any actual comfortable furniture like a sofa or a lounge or a pillowed recess, I am half held captive by gravity, while Ellin relies on her size to give me enough space to relax.  She shouldn’t rely on that.  My body in the between is slim, with my tail being my thickest limb, but she’s not some hulking goliath that can replace an actual seat with her body.

Mark, who has recently escaped my current predicament, nods along encouragingly with her story.  “I know what you mean.  I’m thinking of bringing [Acting] style upgrades next life just to cover for the early years.  If I can find the slots.”

“Oy!  No interrupting!”  Ellin’s voice holds no real anger.  “So I’m sitting there, and the healer makes the adult… makes my parents step out.  And she asks me what really happened.”

“I’m assuming,” I guess, “that you stared at her, and said, in your very serious creepy child voice, that you punched a horse?”  Ellin scowls down at me, and I wonder if I’m about to be ejected from my makeshift living seat.

I almost fall when she brings her arms up to fold them over her chest, the dust colored cloth wraps on her body rasping against themselves as she moves.  “No.”  She protests.

“But you did punch the horse.”  Jules inquires.  Or states.

“The horse bit me!”  Ellin defends herself loudly.  “I had to go to the healer for it!  My hand was shattered!”  She pauses, and her face briefly reflects the look that any of us might get at any time, where we remember just how old we are, and how much of our histories has been erased.  The tall woman massages her hand, as if pushing away a phantom pain.  “Didn’t really think about it, but it hurt my whole life.  It just felt normal after a while.  And I told the healer it wasn’t the horse’s fault.”

“Awwww.”  I twist so I can try to hug Ellin, and fail, so I settle for wrapping my tail partly around her torso instead.  “Defending the horse’s honor!”

“Well, it wasn’t the horse’s fault.  And I got my revenge!  I didn’t want it turned into stew just over a hand.”  Ellin sounds like she’s trying to explain away basic compassion, though I can see the tinge of color on her cheeks that reveals her inner feelings.  So many lives and half of us never bothered to remove the default blush from our bodies in the between.

Six and Mark start a tangential conversation, wondering whether or not Ellin’s action would count as ‘saving’ someone for the purpose of the between’s often cryptic achievement scheme.  This rapidly devolves into them defending different positions on whether or not a horse does, could, or should count as a ‘someone’.

It’s so fucking nice here.

I don’t join their chat, I just sink back into Ellin, and let her pet my shoulders and back in an idle motion I don’t even know if she knows she’s making.

It doesn’t take much focus to not check my heartbeats.  I know I’ve got a bit more time.  A few more stories, a few more drinks.  And until the new beginning rushes up and overtakes me, I’m going to enjoy my time in Bastion’s.

Ellin, having lost half her audience, tells me in a quieter voice about how her dad joked about feeding her to a horse for the rest of their time together.  On the other side of the table, Six makes an argument that horses are a special category of life form, and Mark makes a tautological statement about the nature of people.  Jules stealthily slithers away from us, heading for the bar to pour himself something that smokes in the shot glass, apparently having decided he isn’t tipsy enough for this conversation.

They’re never going to resolve it.  There’s so many parts of the between and its classifications that are seemingly willfully obscured from us.  Things that might depend on the world, or the life, or a coin flip.

“Did you end up with a horse-based reward?”  Mark eventually asks as he and Six agree to disagree, though I couldn’t honestly tell you what side either of them are on, or if they both changed their opinions halfway through their chat.

“Ach, I didn’t even think of that.  Let me check.”  Ellin starts swiping at the air, brief flickers as she allows us to see notifications in the small moments before rapidly dismissing them.  Ellin is a speed reader, and I think has something to recall all of them anyway if she needs to.  “No, no horse powers.  I feel like for something that impacted me my whole life I should have at least gotten [Horse Resistance]!”

“What is it with you and weird resistances?”  I ask her.

“Well, if I stack enough, eventually nothing can kill me!”

The next words are out of my mouth before I can stop myself.  “But then we’d never see you again.”

Ellin freezes briefly over me, a shock through her body that I can feel, before she grabs the reins and goes back to her old self.  “Bah!  I’m sure there’s always a new and innovative way to get murdered!”  She declares.  “You can’t get rid of me that easily.  Anyway, someone else’s turn for an embarrassing childhood story.  Mark?”

“Did you forget the part where my parents tried to have me ritually sacrificed?”  Mark demands.

Jules pats him on the shoulder with a manipulator tendril.  “My friend, as loath as I am to take Ellin’s side“ Jules nobly ignores our friend’s shout of dissent “I think I speak for all of us when I tell you that being ritually executed is no excuse to not get up to childhood antics.”

With a grunt of exasperation, Mark stands up, walks over to the bar, and ducks down under the counter.  I hear the clatter of glass, and decide to call over to him.  “Don’t drink the poison!”

“Why do we have this?!”  Mark’s muffled voice comes back, before he stands back up holding something from Six’s [Herb Box], which he adds to a mixer along with splashes of two different liquids.  We all watch with curiosity as Mark shakes it vigorously, pours it into a small cup, and drinks the whole thing in one gulp.  “Ugh.  Horrible.”  He proclaims. “Okay.  I’m ready for storytime.”

“Your life could not possibly have been that bad.”  Jules challenges, his triangular red expression marks shifting into something that I think is sarcastic.  “Six told us a fine tale of friendship and romance, and he was property for much of his life.”

“Being fair to Mark, I do intentionally weight my upgrades toward making my childhood easier.”  Six offers.  “I find those years to be the most challenging, for dealing with emotional overflow.”

Jules ducks his central body in a gesture of acceptance.  “Ah, that is fair, I apologize if I offended.  Now, to give proper offense, Mark!  Stop playing with your between given notifications and tell us of your childhood!”

I turn my head, and finally decide I cannot deal with the growing discomfort of Ellin’s lap, no matter how enjoyable the physical presence of someone else is.  Slipping to the floor and bouncing back with my tail as a support, I grab the chair next to her and look over to see what Mark is doing.

Currently, he has about six different projections around him.  Glittering gold and blue, words that I can easily read in their reversed position, but decide not to.  I get what Mark is doing, and I’m not especially in favor of it.

The between gives us achievements and accolades and rewards for all manner of things.  Sometimes repetition does it; different types of work are a consistent source of marks, if you’re willing to put in thousands of hours.  But often, it is singular events that stand out.

What Mark is doing is looking through his notifications for those events, and using them as a springboard for his memories.  Thirty subjective years is a while to hold onto fun stories of childhood, especially if you’ve got twenty other childhoods in your mind.  So it’s understandable that a small assistance in remembering would be helpful.  But there’s just one problem with that.

The between gives us achievements capriciously.  What might be something that was hugely emotionally important to a life could never show up in a notification, while that time you lost your coin purse and forgot about it a week later might end up being something that gets you a new [Perception] line.  So when I say I don’t like Mark using his notifications for this, it’s not because I’m being purposefully stubborn, but because I worry that it pushes us to forget what’s important to us, and to tell stories about what the between wants us to.

“Okay,” Mark says slowly as he pushes most of his notifications down and pulls one in particular up to eye level, “I was going to tell you about how I met a kid traveling across the southern continent.  His name was Uthberi, we were close, and I ran into him after my… second or third escape?  There was a lot going on.  Anyway, I had this story that I remembered about the time we met an actual kin-touched, which are… the kin are sorta like spirits, but I don’t understand them that well.  Kin-touched were supposed to be a myth, even though they killed people accused of being them, so… look, it was a fucked up world.  Anyway, I was going to talk about Uthberi and I meeting one of them”

“That sounds like a secret king name.”  I offer.  I’ve got a good sense for these things, and it’s easy mode to acknowledge that any name starting with ‘uth’ is a secret king name.

Mark stares at me, slowly shaking his head as he refills his coconut cup with the last of Six’s outside-brewed cider.  “You know what?”  He asks me.  “You fucking know what, Luri?”

“I can read backward, so yes.”

“I can’t, but I have strong pattern recognition skills, and I have known Mark for long enough that I recognize his tone, so I also know in advance.”  Six provides.  Ellin doesn’t add anything, as she’s too busy cackling at the comment.

It’s almost sad watching his shoulders slump.  “Okay, well, Luri can you please teach me how to recognize secret king names?”  Mark asks.  “Because apparently being in a romantic relationship that includes a secret king is worth an achievement.”

“Wait, you were smooching the king?!”  Ellin demands, suddenly invested enough to push through her laughter.  Her eyes are wide as she leans forward, both hands pressed on the felt of the big table we use so often.

Mark flushes a bright red as we all stare at him, but he doesn’t say anything.  Which is when I decided to give him a little nudge.  “So, how long, exactly, were you friends with the secret king, and your not-actually-mythical kin-touched friend?”  I ask him.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”  Mark grumbles.

“Because I just have this kind of comforting thought that, even though you died in a car crash, at least they’ll have each other for comfort.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”  The words sound angry, but I can see Mark starting to crack.  The laughter at the ironic nature of life, mixed with the distance of death, making the whole thing an utterly hilarious experience.

Jules makes a vibrating pulse that drags attention toward him.  “If you don’t mind, though, I have a personal interest in royal genealogy, and…”

Slowly, deliberately, Mark lowers his head down to the table and curls his arms over himself.  His muffled voice comes out a second later. “I hate all of you.”

Ellin tries to say something, but just gasps out laughter, hammering a hand on the table as she does.  When she catches her breath, she drags herself up and circles around to throw herself around Mark in a crushing hug.  I steal her chair while her shoulder’s continue to shake with barely suppressed mirth.

“You know, it’s strange, the majority of my lives do not involve romance.”  Six comments.  “Perhaps I should stack upgrades for strange coincidences, as I am certain Mark has done.”

“Fuck off.”  Mark’s reply is so drained of any malice that it just makes Ellin start laughing all over again.

I’m not sure if he’s trying to help or make things worse, but Jules politely drums two of his tentacles on the table to draw attention.  “Out of genuine curiosity, and because I somehow lack Luri’s ability to read your notifications backward, upside down, and across the table, might I ask what marvel was bestowed upon you for your frankly unlikely romantic life?”  He asks Mark.

Admittedly, I’m curious myself.  I have a lot of philosophical dislike for pursuing specific things in a way that twists how we actually live our lives, or for turning ourselves into unthinking machines by hyperfocusing on certain abilities.  But some of the traits or perks we earn are so strange and wild, that I cannot help but be interested in them.  Especially when, as with something like this, it arose naturally from a life lived with a pure intent.

Struggling to get an arm out from underneath Ellin’s affectionate pin, Mark drags his notification back down and double checks it, before opening another shimmering page and flicking his finger across it until he finds what he’s looking for.  “Okay.  Looks like a task-style perk.  Four slots, [Charisma] base.  Eight thousand marks of faith to buy it.  And… uh… wait, what?”

Ellin lets him go as Mark struggles to right himself so he can read more closely.  “Task is what you call quests, right?”

“Tasks are repeatable, quests aren’t.”  Six corrects her.

“Why do we call them that?”

“Quests are more fun.”  I answer her gleefully.

Mark looks up from his reading to fix uncertain eyes on us.  “Okay, this one does the annoying thing that Luri likes to complain about-“

“Hey!”

“-where it assigns an arbitrary value to abstract actions, and-“

“Okay fair, I do hate that.”

“-and,” Mark tries to continue through my banter, “for every ten whatevers of upward social momentum, it… it generates a [Gust Coin Of Promised Nobility].”

Jules, Six, and I all share a suddenly confused look.  Well, I look confused.  Six never looks confused, his face is as beautifully stoic as ever, and Jules is also continually himself.  But I’ve raised my eyebrows.

The reason is simple. Hundreds of lives between us, and none of us have ever seen a [Coin] of any description here in the between.  In all honesty, we’d given up on ever finding one, and I think we’ve talked to Mark about it a long time ago.  Because really, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that is absent from the between; there’s no indoor plumbing, why should there be currency?

I don’t know how old I am, but I am old.  And yet I am still able to be surprised by things like this.  It’s a pleasant little bubble of something fascinating, and I treasure the experience.  But I have a followup question.

“What do those do?”  Ellin beats me to it.  “Let you collect trophies of your conquest?  Oh!  I wonder what it thinks of mobility through conquest?  Say I take over a city, what’s that, you think?  At least ten.”

Ellin asks what none of us are going to know.  What do the coins do?

Everything in the between does something.  But it’s all… conceptual, in a way.  We play with metaphors made physical.  Even our bodies are just suggestions of what bodies are supposed to be, stripped of anything inconvenient.  Books are meant to be read, despite the absolute truth that we cannot all know every language the are written in.  Alcohol is meant to inebriate, despite the surety that our bodies would not process it at the same rate, or even in the same way.  Beds are meant to be slept in, to the extent that only beds can be slept in.

All of it, too, provides bonuses.  Additions to our next lives, in some way.  Faster growth, quicker swords or sharper words, more blood or stronger bones, denser mana or deeper luck.  The between holds objects as candles that light up our souls as we leave.

The only things that stand out as frivolous, or as for their own sake, is souvenirs.  Art, or perhaps memory, just for the reason of being a memory.  Bastion’s is littered with the things, decorated with the leftovers of dozens of lives that don’t change anything except how nice our little public home is.

So what, then, does a coin do?  Coins are meant to buy things.  The lack of an economy here doesn’t bother me; there are no printing presses or wordworkers, but the books can still be read.  But what would it want us to buy?  Or perhaps allow us to buy?

“Perchance it is some form of equippable.”  Jules muses, ignoring my own stare off into space, and also Ellin’s comment about conquering a city.  Sometimes I worry about Ellin.  I don’t think her lives sound as fun as she makes them out to be.  “It is possible that it is meant to be literal currency.  Perhaps taken from a lost world.  At the very least, precious metals in quantity each life could offer a privileged beginning.”

“Could be.”  Mark says with a slow nod.  “Think they return each life?”

“It is your reward, Mark.”  Six’s voice reminds him with the kind of patient steady tone that to me, listening in, sounds like a kind nudge toward personal learning, but I know can also sound like condescension when you’re the one Six is talking to.  “All the same, would you like to tell the story regardless?”

Mark sighs and drops his notifications.  I think all of us are curious enough that we’ll pool marks of faith later to help him afford it.  “Ah, I suppose.  Though I guess I have some things wrong. “ He sighs.  “What I thought happened was that we had just found a good hideout when we heard about an upcoming kin-touched execution, and I prompted Uthberi to help me rescue the victim.  That was when I told him what people thought I was, and he told me his biggest secret, which was that he was on the run from his evil uncle, which I guess is technically true but also absolutely not the whole truth.”  Mark takes a deep breath.

I choose this moment to intercede.  “At least he didn’t make something completely up? I’m assuming the evil uncle was someone who was trying to kill him in some convoluted bloodline ritual that would make him king, right?”

“You’re way too good at this.”  Mark mutters.

“Luri often hides how intelligent she has grown.”  Six offers, which I think I’m offended by.

Both Mark and I ignore the comment.  He takes a moment to grab a napkin and wipe off the bottom of his glass before throwing the brown paper square back into nothingness.  “Well, you’re right again.  So I think we’re sneaking in, but now I realize that it’s possible he just took the risk and ordered the guards away.  Except for one guard, which is what my original story was about, because we rigged up a paint orb trap to blind the guy and then knocked him out and put him in a supply closet, but it was such a mess, and we were dragging this guy around leaving a trail of red paint that looked like blood, and I couldn’t stop laughing while we were supposed to be sneaking into a…” he sighs.  “Okay, that part was real and fun.  Anyway.  We find Masubi, convince her the paint isn’t blood, get him out of there, and the three of us make a daring escape in a car that I now understand was far too conveniently placed for us to steal.  Uggggggh.  I’m such a fucking idiot.”  Mark buries his head in his hands again.

“There there.”  Ellin pats him on the back in what I’m sure she thinks is a reassuring or romantic gesture, but that I bet Mark thinks is akin to being used as a training dummy.  “It’s the habit of men to make poor decisions for their friends.”

“I was a woman in that life!”  Mark’s muffled yell gives Ellin brief pause.

And then she goes right back to making the same petting motion.  “There, there.”  She repeats.  “It’s the habit of women to make poor decisions for their friends.”

“I… that… you…”

“Just take the comfort Mark.”  I offer him.  “So, when did you end up involved with Masubi?”

“Oh, years later.  We split up, because while her being actually kin-touched was fine with the two of us, she was also actually just a thief, and not a very good one at first.  Kept crossing paths.  Uth and I ended up tracking her down for a job when we were older and had a bad habit of playing hero.  And when we saw who she was, we threw the job and started working together again.  For a while.  On and off.  It wasn’t… none of us were great people.”  He admits.  “But we were all trying.  It’s what I liked about her.  She was trying.  And I guess it’s what Uth liked about her too, because…” he makes a sweeping gesture with his hands.

Jules slithers by, giving Mark a pat with a tendril.  “It sounds like you were all quite taken with each other.”

“Guess so.  I’m not even actually mad, honestly.  This is fucking hilarious.  I just… I just wish he’d told me.”  Mark’s shoulders slump.  “I told them everything.”  He says, in a very small voice.

Death reveals a lot about life.  For most people, it’s the ripples and shockwaves that spill out from getting someone’s affairs in order, from last wills and estate sales, uncovering old secrets and hidden truths, or even just forcing confrontations between the survivors.  And typically for the dead, all the upturned truths of their lives are… well, I still don’t know if worlds have their own afterlives.  So it’s possible that many of the dead do care.

For us, though, our own death reveals so much we might have missed.  There’s quite a lot that can be dragged into the light by the simple phrasing of some of our notifications.

If it happened while we were alive, I think for everyone in our group, it would be a chance at reconciliation.  Or at the least, a strengthening of bonds.  But because we’re already past the worlds we came from, and have no way to ever go back, it stings all the more that we never have the chance to say one last thing.

No one likes to miss out on having the last word.  And when you’re separated by the boundaries of reality, and not just by the end of the night’s party, it does sting.  Mark can’t even tell his friends that he’s not mad at them, and that’s just not fair.

“Ah well.”  Mark tilts his head back.  “At least I’ve got you guys.”  He muses.

“You do have us!”  I tell him with as much energy as I can put into a smile.  “How bout we get someone else’s childhood antics story?”

“How about you, Luri?”  Mark says.

I stare at him with an expecting gaze, before turning to the others.  “How about anyone else? Or a game of something?  Or we can all figure out how much faith we don’t have and see if we can get Mark’s task unlocked.”

“I forgot, I’m sorry!”  Mark is having a really hard between this go around.  I almost feel sorry for him.  “Okay, how are you on heartbeats?  We could play a game of something, and you can all make fun of my love life, past and present.”

“I would never make fun of Ellin.”  Six offers as he returns to the table.  “That would be foolish.”

“Oy, hey!”  Ellin, for some reason, protests that.

I shake me head, and check my time.

I’m running out.

But not enough to worry about yet.

Which I don’t tell them, exactly.  “I could play something short.”  I say, just as I hear a door closing behind me.  “I learned a new, weird way to play Regicide.”

Jules gives a buzzing nod of agreement.  “I am curious.  Six, please go grab some cards, I shall go serve our new customer, and Ellin, you… you continue trying to seduce Mark, I suppose.  Luri, I have no task for you.”

“I’m fine watching.”  I send Jules off with a smile.

And it is sitting there, watching Ellin bluntly flirt with Mark, hearing Jules explain his form to a new passing patron, and waiting for Six, that I have a thought.  It’s a thought I have every few lives, but I always get distracted before I can put it into action.

If I have to live another life, I should build something like this.  Out there, in a world, where it’s easier.  Where simple wood can become rooms and counters and tables.  It’s not fair that I have to wait so long for so little of Bastion’s; I should carry something of it with me.

Maybe next life, I’ll be able to try.