Sublife Crisis - Chapter 19 (Patreon)

I've been having a hard time keeping up on this, sorry everyone

_____

You’d think that by the fifth time someone came in, Molly would have gotten tired of turning her highly tuned kobold mutt body into a projectile weapon and testing the limits of the between’s safety measures.  But no, partly because Molly is a boundless pit of enthusiasm, and partly because our bodies don’t tire here.

Our minds do, certainly.  Emotional exhaustion, runaway thoughts, broken focus, all of that adds up over time.  There are fixes, like getting as close to drunk as we’re capable of, or sleeping.  But you can’t get drunk without an inebriant, and you can’t sleep without a bed; though at least we have one of those available.

Molly isn’t immune.  But Molly is also an extrovert, and has been for the last ten lives we’ve intersected after, and I both admire and envy her ability to refresh herself with company.  I love company, I love my family here in the between, but even when I’m watching the heartbeats slip away, I cannot do nothing but engage with them.  I need to spend time silently in the library, or take a nap, or grudgingly focus on equipping talents and perks.

Maybe I’ll do it a little less grudgingly this time.  We’ll see.  I’ll think about it after I finish watching Ellin frantically try to shake our kobold friend off of using her horns as a jungle gym; Ellin’s towering form is no less dexterous for all her size, but Molly is both fast, and incredibly dedicated to getting a rise out of us through what she calls physical affection.

And maybe she did tire herself out over the last few subjective hours, because Elling actually manages to catch her, and the next thing I know, there’s a familiar projectile of scales and fur and whiskers zipping between Six and myself.

“Now what did we learn?”  Jules sounds serenely patient as three of his manipulator tendrils capture Molly out of the air and daintily settle her back on her feet.  His glowing red eyes are framed in a slowly spinning open triangle as he speaks with his smooth tenor of a voice.

“Ellin is faster and it’s not fair?”  Molly suggests.

Ellin takes one more heavy breath as she steadies herself, tugging the dusty white wraps around her arms and torso back into their proper place.  “Hoy!  Don’t blame this on me!”  She barks out.  And then her eyes settle on the rest of us, and her face splits into a broad and toothy smile.

And I feel a bit of worry.  Not anxiety, I don’t have much of that about other people anymore.  But I was looking forward to seeing Ellin; to seeing what we might be now, to interacting with her in a different way, to having time to talk.  And all of a sudden, I realize that she might not have spent her whole last life pining for something the way I did.  That she might not still feel the same way.  That any number of things could have happened to make her change her mind away from the fleeting and ephemeral romance she wanted to try last time.

She greets Six with a bear hug, and a whispered word, which the golem nods at and gently slips from his chair with his characteristic elegant precision.  Then Ellin drops down next to me, and before I can say anything, I find myself being kissed.

I melt into her, letting her take the lead.  It lasts long enough that my heart starts racing and then slowing from lack of breath, and I have to pull back with a gasp.  Ellin’s eyes seek mine, and I see a small worry there too, though she’s decided to react a slightly different way.  “Hoy Luri!”  She greets me.

“I had a question but I forgot it.” I hear myself stammer.

“Perfect.”  Ellin’s worry is gone, replaced with smug self satisfaction, and I’m a little irate that she might have earned it.  “Oh!  Mark’s here!”  She pops upright, rustling a hand through my hair as she heads for the bar where Mark is carefully mixing ingredients in our crystal pitcher.  I shoot him a knowing grin as I see him eying Ellin approaching, and he barely gets one word of protest about proper stirring before he’s lost to the same treatment I got.

Whatever life Ellin lived, however long it was, it doesn’t seem to have done a single thing to change her declaration from last go round.

I let the others go through the round of greetings.  Hugs, warm words, smiles, the constant familiar feeling of seeing people you’ve missed for so long.  But no matter how fragmented my own personality can get, or how hard it is to know what I actually want, I do know that I’ll always love coming back to them.

A long, long time ago, death scared me.  Now, it’s just another front door into a place I can’t wait to visit.  That might be unhealthy.  But it’s not as if we have a clear picture of what a mentally stable deathless looks like; it turns out that sociological studies in the place between worlds are actually somewhat challenging to conduct.  Who knew?

Me.  I knew.  I tried once.  Part of me still is trying, sort of.  It’s why I like talking to everyone who comes through.

I feel like I’ve only just blinked when Mark is setting a familiar old goblet down in front of me, and filling it with two different liquids from two different pitchers, the brew beginning to steam and bubble as the mixes meet.  I eye the stuff that would assuredly be lethal to this body anywhere else, trying to remember if I liked it or not before tasting it, while Mark continues to circle the table as everyone sits.  He’s a deft hand as a bartender, he’s done it across five lives including his first, but it’s still impressive how no matter how impressive his muscular frame is, he never even brushes anything he doesn’t mean to as he serves our group.

Then he’s settled too.  Across from me, Molly, half wrapped in one of Jules’ tentacles, pokes at her cup in concern.  “It’s whining.”  She states, snapping her eyes over to Mark.  “You have a new cup!  Did this actually melt your last one?”

“Luri gave me a new one.  I like this one!”  Mark defends his carved coconut shell.  “Also it’s not ‘whining’, it’s undergoing the Yesmin reaction.  Drink it before it stops.”  He hoists his own drink up to his mouth and takes a pull of it, keeping his expression positive.  I try the same, and remember that achitas is not my favorite drink, that I think my entire face feels like it’s on fire, and that while I’m absolutely going to drink all of this, I need to focus to stay on task and struggle to keep my mouth in a placid smile for now.

“Before it stops whining.”  Molly states.

“Ah, it’s good!  Me, I loves the stuff.  Makes me feel alive in a deeply metaphorical way!”  Ellin’s cup, even though the blue coloration makes it partly opaque, still shows the roiling insides of the drink as she slams down half of it and makes a content noise.

Molly is still suspicious.  “I feel like you’re all lying to me.”  She offers.  But then she takes a deep breath and an equally deep sip through the metal straw that’s sticking out of her incongruous kiln fired mug.  Instantly I can tell she regrets it, her face screws up, and the smoke the drink produces starts seeping through the corners of her muzzle.  “Ahhh!  Ahy ‘ate iss!” She tries to talk without swallowing.

“Oh, you definitely want to swallow it.”  Mark advises.

“Yes.  Otherwise it may explode.”  Six comments, sipping his diligently.  He nods appreciatively at Mark.  “A good drink.  Thank you for making it for us.”

“Ahm ‘eying!”  Molly rolls out of her chair to the floor, flailing like a poked king hornet.  “Jules!  Help me!”

“…How, dear?”  Jules sounds split between confused and amused.  “Any action I have to assist the inside of your maw, the others may take umbrage with.  And really, while I value all of them, I do not think we are quite at that level of casual exhibitionism in our friendships.”  He pauses.  “Except Luri.”

I chuckle, currently undermining his point by wearing anything.  “You just have to take another sip, Molls.”  I say coyly.  “You get used to it.  It grows on you!  Like plasma fog!”

Molly just lets out a low wail from under the table.  The black wooden chair she was sitting in shifts slightly as her claws come up to grab the seat, and she hauls herself back up.  “You’re all awful!”

“I do actually enjoy this.”  Six says with unfazed calm.

“You’re all awful except Six!”  Molly corrects herself, her claws scraping her muzzle and pulling on her whiskers like she’s trying to wipe a spiderweb away.  “You owe me for this!”  She declares.

Mark shrugs, his friendly demeanor not skipping a beat.  “Yeah, that’s fair.”  He leans back and sighs, and a tension that had been with him since he entered starts to ease away.  “Hi.”  He says softly.  “I really did miss you all.”  At his words, Molly drops her mock aggravation in short order, and settles back into her seat, scooting slightly closer to Jules as she does so.

“Hard life?”  Molly asks.

“Crazy life.”  Mark answers with a wry twist on his lips.

I want to reach over to him, but Ellin is between the two of us and beats me to it anyway.  “Wanna share about it?”  I ask him.

“Eh.”  He tries to brush it off.  “I’ll trade you.”  Mark offers.  And the others all groan, because they know already that getting details out of me is often a feat that the between should reward a person for.

Something about that makes me feel rebellious.  “Okay.”  I answer simply, shrugging.  Jules’ eyes spike upward in surprise, and Mark’s eyebrows do something similar.  Ellin just gives me an excited grin, rubbing her hands together.  “Want me to go first?”

“Are we doing life stories, or worlds, or just highlights?”  Mark asks suspiciously.

“I was going to start rambling and see where I ended up.”  I give an honest appraisial and get a barking laugh from Molly.  “I haven’t even checked my notifications yet, either, so I’ll probably forget some important things.”

Ellin slaps a hand against my tail as I stand and start to lightly pace around my wedge of the table.  “You hate using th’ notifications as memories anyway!”  She reminds me.

Which is totally fair, I do.  I feel like they make us lose something when we do that.  I will be checking all of mine sooner than normal this time, though, if only to retrieve something that I picked up on the way through my last life.

My friends watch me with eager looks as I take a breath and try to think of how to start my story.  I don’t do this very often, I’m not a good storyteller when it’s just the open expectation of explaining a whole lifetime.  There’s a lot of lives I come back from feeling outright ashamed of myself, and in truth, this one is no different.  But at the same time, I’m feeling warm and a little giddy from the assuredly caustic drink Mark served, and all these people are the closest possible friends, even if they’re friends from years and years ago, subjective.

So I just start talking.  “I was born late, and badly.  That mom died when I was a year old from complications, and I got stuck in an orphanage.  Not a bad one, but it’s where I grew up.  And can I just say?  It’s a little freeing to just be one of the kids, and not someone’s special someone.  Six sorta made me think of this earlier.”  I nod toward the golem, sipping with both hands from his ceremonial basin, before continuing.  “The world was one of those human only ones, with lots of constant border shifts instead of a single history defining war.  And it was kind of assumed a lot of the kids in my orphanage would go into a military.  I beat the odds, though, and got a scholarship.  Started studying psychology.”

Jules raises one of his mobility tentacles.  “Not to interrupt, but was this choice perhaps because you wished to learn how to aide anyone in particular?”

“You know, you might think that?”  I bite my lip.  “But surprisingly no.  Mostly.  I mean, if I get some kind of [Ennui Resistance] then I’m not using it.  But any [Wisdom] backed ability that has a single use effect would… I’m getting sidetracked.”  I shake my head rapidly to try to get off that tangent.

Six sets his basin down calmly.  “Your studies.”  He prompts me.

“Right.  So, schools weren’t great.  Cities were kind of impressive, but a lot of them had been built a while back and were just coasting.  They were huge though, I think you all could have found something to love.   Big towering spires with webs of paths between them, open spaces everywhere.  Not much sun though, but someone a long time ago had invented a bioluminescence thing that lit the streets and it was really comfortable.”  I slip too easily into nostalgia for a place I’ll never see again.  “But I learned what I could, and then, got surprise recruited into a local military program.”

“As a psychologist?”  Mark sounds surprised.  Then his face gets a sad look on it and he glances away.  “No, yeah, sorry.  I just thought about it.  Keep going.”

“So, local physics were a little forgiving compared to what we’re usually used to, but no meta effects as far as anyone knew.  No magic, no aura, none of that.”  I hate calling magic magic, but now isn’t the time for Luri to go off on a much longer, much more irate tangent.  “Or at least, that was commonly accepted wisdom.  The thing about the program was, aside from having really nice accommodations, they wanted everyone to cross train with the hardware and wetware aspects.  Oh, the rooms were great, though.  I had so many plants.  The world wasn’t really that green when I got there, but I just asked and got a dozen wallvines for my room, and I understand this probably isn’t what you’re all looking for.”  I flush as I get back to the point.

The others don’t look bothered.  Ellin especially is just staring at me with a goofy sparkle in her eyes.  “Tell us about your bed!”  She demands.

“The bed was fine.  It was a military installation, Ellin, the bed was only ever going to get up to ‘fine’ and you know it.”  Molly jumps in, rapidly chattering an answer.

Being interrupted doesn’t bother me.  For the same reason tangents don’t bother them; we’ve got all the time we need now.  “I wish Molly was wrong…” I leave it open to interpretation.  “Also sorry Ellin, no lurid details of how I used the bed.  Mostly because I didn’t.  What I did do was remember that I have five different [Intellect] perks slotted, and the heaviest one is actually [Intuit Toward Engineering Macro Outcome].  I say remember because I didn’t check anything but my aura last time, or for a few lives really, so…”

“You’re impossible.”  Mark gives me a shake of the head.

“Well, that’s what the engineers said, too.”  I agree.  “Regardless.  The pay was good, the only problem was that we were working for part of an endless global machine that fed off a series of proxy wars and shifting borders.  Which, I mean… too common, really.  Except this time I decided to do something about it.”  My chest tightens slightly, and it’s not the pilot’s suit constricting me.  “I had that constant thought, the whole time.  That I needed to do more, needed to be more.  Needed to make sure I’d earn enough heartbeats that I wouldn’t be alone.  I might have panicked.”  Might is generous.  I did, as a certainty.  “So my first thought was sabotage.”

Ellin butts in, loudly declaring at me as she tilts her head back to look at me upside down, “And this is why you need to always have a [Strike] on you!”

“Yeah, I went another direction.”  I stop behind her and rest my elbows amid her horns as I keep talking, pulled forward when she rights herself, but staying perched on her head.  “The military wanted a mental weapon.  So I built one.  Used all my [Charisma] charges to get the rest of the scientists on my side, and then, we… built a weapon.  Sort of.”

“Ah.”  Six speaks softly.  “Your modifications, as a recovery.”

I give him a nod.  “So it actually took half my life to get everything set up, and it was a massive conspiracy, but when we were ready, we flipped about eight thousand switches, and we… ended war.”  I shrug, like that’s just a thing.  “Partly I was just in the right place to make the most out of a few traits and aura layers, and also a lot of other people helped make it happen, but also partly, I was there because I was trying to do something that could make a difference.  So I give myself maybe a third of the credit.”

“What exactly did you do?”  Mark asks, leaning forward on the table, his chair squeaking under his shifting weight.

I shrug again.  “Created an infectious mental command that made people repulsed by armed conflict.”  I say.  “That was actually the easy part, if you can believe it.”

“I don’t.”  “Nope.”  “I refuse to believe that.”  “Yeh liar!” “Psh!” Their voices overlap and almost make me switch from dramatic regret to laughter on the spot.

“Well it was!  The hard part was what came after!  It took another good chunk of my life to build and tweak, but those same people I worked with… we made a short term version of that.  A kind of broadcast tower for emotional vibes, sort of.  And then we put them up all over the place, and used operant conditioning to make everyone associate positive social behavior with raw happiness.”

“Oh… shit…” Molly mutters.

“Then we got creative.  Oh, we were absolutely in charge of things by that point.  More or less.  So we-“

“You took over a world.”  Ellin gawps at me.

“Not alone!”  I fail to adequately defend myself.  “Also I didn’t take over!  I was elected!  Sort of.  And… uh…” I trail off, clenching and unclenching my hands trying to look at anything except the people around the table.  “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.  It just got out of hand.  We wanted to build a utopia.”  I laugh bitterly.  “I think we did.  That’s the real fucked up thing.  I really think it worked, mostly.  We mastered social conditioning, we had hypnotic trances as part of behavioral correction in clean and practiced facilities, we didn’t have to make anyone do anything.  We just told them that we’d make them happy, and the world tripped over itself to say yes.”

Ellin shoves me back lightly, looking between me and Six with growing horror.  “You did it to yourself, too.”  She says.  “You idiot!”

“Of course I did.”  I say, folding my arms.  It’s the one thing I don’t regret, in a perverse way.  “I’m not a hypocrite, Ellin!  Not while I’m alive, anyway!  Yeah, Six, I know that… yes Jules I know I can be… okay all of you stop staring at me.”  I flush again, ducking my head.  “I was the perfect member of a perfect society.  We made it safe, practical, and healthy for everyone to be happy all the time.  We killed depression, we ended fear.  The murder rate in my world was almost nothing, and over ninety percent of it was people who refused to go through the process.”

Six holds up a hand.  “Why were those people around?”

“…Because we didn’t force anyone to do anything?   Did I not explain this?”  I look between them.  “I mean, we didn’t ask permission to wipe out the national and private militaries, but they were literally military targets.  That’s what that means.  It means you can fight them and they don’t get to complain.”

“That is… technically correct.”  Jules says slowly.

Molly flicks a claw across his central stalk.  “You say that’s the worst kind of correct!”  She sounds annoyed.

“I disagree.”  Six naturally sides with me.  Six loves technicalities.

Ellin’s face watches me sadly.  “I also disagree, but only because I know Luri.”  She says.  “I know you.”  She whispers.  “But I don’t know how you could do that.”

“Ellin, I love you, but you fight someone in almost every life you-“

“Oy, no, not that.”  Ellin flutters a hand.  “It’s really hot that you’re finally conquering worlds, love that.  I mean tamperin’ with your mind.  On purpose.  That… you could have forgotten us, Luri.”  She sniffs, and looks away, scrubbing the back of a hand against an eye.  “You could have forgotten me.”

I want to say that I doubt that very much.  I want to tell her that I would be utterly unable to forget her, or anyone seated here with us.  Every part of me that cares about Ellin and Mark and Six and Jules and Molly and every other smaller friend who occasionally graces us with a visit, or who I’ve only met once or twice, all those parts of my mind and whatever passes for my soul want so desperately to speak the magic words that I would never forget her.

But I think we’ll live forever.  I think the word never is a lie, and always is a cruel joke.  And also, more immediately, I know that what I did, even though I was able to quickly undo it, was damage that followed me home.

In trying to save a world from itself, I almost threw my own mind away.  What kind of person does that?

Well.  Someone who didn’t know what came after for them, maybe.

I think Mark sees my obvious distress, because he wraps me in a hug while I stand there trying to figure out what I should say.  What I even could say, except to just shrug and tell Ellin that I know and that I’m sorry, but apologies like that have a little less weight after a few hundred subjective years.  So I lean into Mark’s strong arms, and don’t look at Ellin.

And really, this was what I actually wanted.  Not that I’d say it that way, but this is what I feel, in my shame, that I needed and deserved.  Everyone should be mad at me.  I broke a whole world’s civilization so that I could be happy for a little while, and I almost changed myself into someone who wouldn’t come back to Bastion’s at all; just stare at the ceiling and occasionally masturbate and feel content enough with no thoughts or social contact or anything else.  I almost destroyed my mind, chasing heartbeats.  And they really should think I’m an idiot for it.

The next words I hear that aren’t quiet mutters are Mark’s.  “Ya know,” he says, letting me go and moving my unresisting form to sit, “I honestly don’t know what I expected, but there’s no way mine is going to top that.  My worst fuckup was adopting a dog.”

“Hey, wait, dogs are cool.”  Ellin instantly comes to Mark’s dog’s defense.

“I was a refugee!  I could barely feed myself!”  Mark rebuts.  “Luri’s decision to mind control herself is basically genius compared to me starting a dog orphanage while starving and traveling three thousand miles on foot.”

He’s trying to cheer me up.  Mark wants me to be okay, and while I think he knows it’s never that simple and it’s never a moment to moment decision to just ‘be fine’, he’s trying.  He cares.  No matter how stupid I’ve been, he cares.  It’s pretty open emotional manipulation.  But, all the same, as I see Ellin relax, and then ask me if I’m okay; as Molly and Jules relax, and ask me a few world or body questions; as Six just treats me like he always does…

I do feel okay.

So I adjust myself in the chair, and pull my tail up, and take a deep breath.  Feel my heart count down my time here in the between.  And I ask a very important question.

“So, do you have any pictures of the dogs?”