Sublife Crisis - Chapter 22 (Patreon)

“A little to the left!”  I call up at Molly.

The little kobold is hanging in the air near the wall of Bastion’s that extends from where the bar ends, tail frantically wagging, wobbling in place as Jules holds her up from his own perch on the edge of the library’s railing.  We all know that she can’t die if she falls, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt.

Right now she’s holding a loop of shaped wood, a ritual symbol from her last life that she gained as a souvenir, and trying to affix it to our wall.  One of the mounting points that Six had in his inventory clutched in one hand while the other strains to keep the wooden loop aloft properly, all while Jules does his best to hold her steady.

Jules is my friend, and I love him very much, but this just looks like a bad idea to me.  You don’t ask someone who has tentacles for all his limbs to be your ladder.  In most places, physics just doesn’t work that way.  Get someone with rigid arms.  Or, better yet, a ladder.  We don’t have a ladder, because even if we did, where are we supposed to keep it?  Propped up in the magical fey evening in our new hallway to nowhere?  That seems rude somehow.  And while we’re a lot of things here, tasteless isn’t one of them.

What I am, sometimes, though, is overly cheerful in how unhelpful I am.  Which is why I’m standing below Molly, risking impact from her falling form, to heckle her.  “No, your other left!”  I yell.

“I thought we were friends Luri!”  She barks, the canine part of her mixed form coming through in her voice.  “You’re supposed to help meeeee!” She squeals as Jules almost fumbles her out of the air, catching her in a tangle of limbs as he tries to carefully move her to not be upside down.

“I am helping!  I’m giving interior design advice!”

“Have you ever been an interior designer?  At all?”  Ellin asks me curiously.  Her feet are up on one of our smaller tables, and she’s reading the dust jacket of the book I brought back, an aura of casual contentedness coming off her like an almost physical force as she sips at her lemonade.  “I don’t have a list of things you’ve been.  And don’t” she preempts me “don’t tell me we should make a list.  If you can’t remember it, it absolutely doesn’t count for decorating here.”

I think about it.  I worked for a construction firm a few lives back, which sort of intersects.  And I sort of remember a few years consripted into a consecration brigade that kind of involved the process of setting up the ritual sites for a state church.

Neither of those are going to count, and I already know it.  So I answer tactically.  “In my last life, actually, there was a small island nation with a tradition of building spaces with a single looping hallway.  So there was kind of a… an almost spiritual connection to how things like furniture and storage and decor was placed, with regard to that core architectural through line?  It was really interesting.  Also had a lot to do with rain, since that was kind of the default weather in the place it came from, so it never really took off in some places.”

Ellin blinks at me, cocking her horned head ever so slightly.  “That… oy, didn’t you… spend your last life engineering world domination?”  She purses her lips at me.  “When did you have time to learn how to decorate.”

“I still had a home, Ellin!”  I place a hand on my breast in indignation, which I can already see I have overdone as she snorts at me.  “Okay, fine, I didn’t.  I’m just sort of aware the style existed, I thought if I talked fast enough, you’d believe me.”

“That doesn’t work on me.  That never works on me!”

I shrug, palms facing the ceiling as I grin at her.  “It might have worked on Molly!”

It probably wouldn’t have.  And Ellin’s distraction of my unhelpful nonsense has been apparently just what Molly and Jules needed to shove her into position and affix her ritual loop to the wall.  It sits proudly now, slightly offset from and over a tapestry of some kind of cat creature, but otherwise all on its own on that part of Bastion’s wall.  The dark golden wood of the main room’s walls contrasting with the white and living green of Molly’s reminder.

I steal the good chair at our main table while Jules struggles to pull Molls back to safety, and everyone else moves about on their own little missions.  My eyes trace the hoop of wood, the small carvings in it, the places where offshoots were left to grow and shaped back in instead of being pruned, the indication of life.  I let my thoughts dwell on the thing, and how it might actually be if not alive, then at least not simply dead wood here in the between.

Near me, there are sounds.  A page turns as Ellin reads.  The bar’s endless spout hisses as water is poured.  Words and giggles and hums are exchanged upstairs.  A door opens and closes and Mark calls a greeting.

But my eyes are tracing the wooden circle, and trying to understand it.  Or maybe not understand.  Maybe simply to explore it; every detail leads to another, every little piece is part of something that trails to a new spot that I haven’t put my eyes on before.  It’s not fascinating, but it seems ever-shifting and endless in a way that a simple object should not be.

A voice addresses me, and I blink a green and brown world out of my eyes as I turn.  The between intrudes, tacking a new notification onto the end of what’s left of my list.  I tilt my head back down, the near-arcane level of neck support from the pilot’s suit mixed with the way the between keeps my body whole meaning that I don’t have any soreness from staring up at a high angle for… almost three thousand heartbeats.

The noise I make as I look down and see Shevoy is one of almost stuttering confusion, even as I am already making the rapid mental connections that Molly’s sacrosanct wall decor might be a little more than simply a neat piece of art.  I follow it up with something more coherent.  “Hey kiddo.”  I smile at him.  “Adjusting to death again?”

He looks uncomfortable in his skin.  Which makes sense; he’s got two different bodies mixed in there, and no matter what you do in the between, it takes an extensive amount of time and effort and precision to get yourself to a perfect copy of a body you once had.  What he looks like now, a change fueled by our influx of marks and abstracts, is far closer than he could have gotten to something he would find familiar in this life.  But I know from experience that it’s not “him”.  And it won’t be.  Not for a long time.

After a few lives, he’ll make some more changes.  Keep a few things he likes, maybe, but start to become a body that’s his here, and nowhere else.  Or at least, if he does what I did.  What a lot of us do.  There’s always the chance that he finds a different path.  Maybe Shevoy will fall in with that group of perfection-seekers and adopt their ideal body, or just randomize a few features and treat that as natural, or he’ll decide he wants to be a three meter tall cross between a dog and a jet fighter and move toward that.  Though that last one would cost a lot of marks.  A lot.  I wanted to be a jet fighter once, until I learned how expensive mechanical physics were to import to the between.

But all that will have to wait.

“I’m leaving soon.”  His voice wavers as he addresses me.  “I… I wanted to thank you.”

I know my face has a sad look on it, eyes looking up at him with pity that I don’t mean to broadcast quite so strongly.  “I didn’t do this to you.”  I tell him bluntly.

Shevoy gives me the kind of smile that someone uses when they’re feeling old and wise because they think that fifty subjective years has been enough for them to figure things out and they don’t realize that there will never be enough time to know it all.  “Not for the extra chance at life.”  He tells me.  “I know, everyone filled me in.  I mean for last time.”

“Oh.”  I start to shrug.  “I just…”

“Because of you, I wasn’t afraid.”  Shevoy states with solid confidence.  “I owe you my life.  That whole life, if I make my guess.  Not for putting me there, but for the living of it.”  He smiles, whiskers twitching on his oddly shaped cheeks.  “It was worth it.  You were right.  And… I get to do it again.”

Now he sounds nervous.  And no matter that he looks like an adult, or that he had a whole second shot at life, I find myself standing from my ancient wood chair and and giving a hug one more time to a scared child who isn’t sure what’s about to happen.  He leans into it easily, as my arms wrap around him.  “You remember what I said last time?”  I whisper.

“Of course.”  He gives a chuckle into my shoulder.  “You lied to me, and said I was gonna do great things.”

“Hah!”  I bark out the laugh as I try my best to crush him into the hug with my lithe arms.  “Did I lie?  Sounds like you had a family that loved you, and a place in the world.  That seems pretty great to me.”  He starts to make a noise like he’s gonna protest, and I cut him off.  “And you’re gonna do great things this time, too.  Trust me.  I’ve got an eye for this kind of thing.  You’ll do-“

He’s gone, and my hug slips through empty air.  Kept his goodbye until the last minute, and made the rookie mistake of not timing it to get the last word.  He’ll have to learn to do better on that next time, or he’s never going to keep up with Ellin’s score on sassy parting shots.

Jules slides up to me, a pair of tentacles hesitating to wrap around my arm and shoulder in comfort as I stand there in the middle of Bastion’s.  “Are you well?”  He asks me in a low hum.  The old ball of tentacles knows me well enough, and has a similar enough attitude, to know that partings are hard.

“Yeah.”  I surprise myself by meaning it, even as I sniff back tears slightly.  “Yeah, I kinda am.”  I say, wrapping my arm further in Jules’ tendrils and placing my other hand on his flank.  “He’s gonna do fine.”  The words are as much a prayer to the universe as they are self reassurance.

“I’m sure he will.  He seems like a decent enough youngling.”  Jules agrees.  His eyes slide into a pattern of amusement.  “Did he tell you about his upgrades?”

I laugh, because that was the last thing on either of our minds.  “What could he even afford, this early?”  I try to think of what my first few lives were like, back when I bothered to pay attention.  “[Speed Reading]?  Or… uh… Jules it’s been thousands subjective, I don’t remember a single thing I got on my first life.  They’re all just in the inventory pile somewhere.”

Jules vibrates out a joyful sound.  “That would have been your first, Luri!”  He coils around me in a hug.  “No, the youngling borrowed some marks of passion from me, though I’ll never call in the marker, to put himself on the path of [Charisma], and buy himself the [Paramour] aura layer.”

“…I am… a little surprised that I don’t have that.”  I mutter, dipping deep into thought.  “Why don’t I have that?  I’m romantic with half the people in this room!”

“Less than half, we have a guest.”  Jules jabs one of his manipulator tendrils toward the bar, where a new figure is sitting with their back to me as Mark shakes something in our cold steel mixer.  “And I’m confident you have it available.  You just leave half the things you unlock but aren’t gifted untouched.  How many talent trees are you sitting on with the root waiting for purchase and nothing else lensed?  How many aura cysts are sitting in your pocket?”

I cross my arms, letting Jules spill over me in a kind of friendly shared hostility as I try to break away and head toward the bar. “I don’t answer to you!” I declare, like some kind of ancient child throwing a tantrum.  “You’re not my fiduciary!”

“Which is perhaps for the best.”  Jules agrees cheerfully as I drag him along, his mobility tentacles splaying out behind us on the sandy wood.  “I would be rendered catatonic by the wealth you seem to collect and then ignore, and you would be made deeply pouty by my insistence that you do something with it.”  He hums in consideration.  “I suspect we would find a way to kill each other within a hundred thousand heartbeats.”

“We’re in the between.”  I remind him.

Falling neatly into his joking trap.  “Yes!”  Jules agrees.  “This makes it all the more impressive, though perhaps your vast and dusty hoard would allow you to simply purchase a murder.”

I laugh, and finally shrug him off.  Jules gives a similarly amused hum, and lets me go while he moves to speak with Six about something.  And that leaves me free to make my way to the bar, and greet our new guest.

I’m not exactly antisocial, but I often find myself in a comfortable position of loneliness.  Either in my lives, or here.  Being alone is bad, but being by myself when my friends are around is a warm comfort.  All that said, I love meeting new people.  The sound of the front door when no guests were expected is my favored noise when I can experience it as a child, and here at Bastion’s is no different.

“Hey Luri.”  Mark greets me as I walk up and claim a barstool near the stranger.  “Enjoy your nap?”

“Against all odds, yes.  We still need some beds, but you should try it sometime.”  I say, and then clarify before he can ask.  “Staring at Molly’s new wall decoration, I mean.  It’s relaxing.”  He gives a small noise of understanding and goes back to grinding up something from Six’s [Herb Box] on the other side of the counter, while I turn to our newcomer.

They’re wearing a gusi style set of robes, fabric intricately folded to create lines and shapes.  It’s not actually gusi style, that world is far behind me and I’ll probably not see it again, but while the woodrunner fiefs were not the only society to come up with the pattern of clothing, they were my first.  So that’s what I call it.

The robes are the most interesting thing about the person, too.  They have a human face that I can only describe as ‘average’, and even Six would beat them in a competition of who put more effort into their body here.  But they smile at me as I sit, and raise the glass to me in a friendly gesture.  “Good morning.”  Their voice, in contrast to the rest of their form, is vibrant and alive, a warm sound dripping with casual invitation to nothing in particular.

I smile back.  “How do you figure?”  I love learning the weird quirks visitors have for processing the between.

“Well I just woke up.”  They try to quirk a single eyebrow, and end up just making a face as they move both at once.  Not a weird face, just… a face.  I’m getting distracted by how boring they are to look at, which is interesting all on its own.  “But more importantly, it’s near the start of a cycle.  I call that morning.  I don’t have a measure for it, but we’re not quite to alignment or setting yet.  So good morning!”

“How often do you get worlds with two suns?”  I ask as Mark sets a mug in front of me and I drink without checking.  This is a mistake.  He’s tricked me, and I have tried something that is his attempt to make a herbal wine by adding herbs to wine and Mark is banned from being on that side of the counter.  “Oh no…” I croak out, hold the mug out away from me like it’s a live bomb.  “No, Mark.  No.  What did you do?”

He glances up from where he’s sniffing things out of the [Herb Box], an innocent expression in his eyes.  “Is it not good?”

“You’re no longer bartender.”  I tell him, tilting the mug and pouring the foul concoction out, the stream of liquid fading to the void halfway to the floor.  “Swap places.”

We do, Mark looking somewhat dejected but also hiding a laugh as we pass by each other and I take my place on the other side of the bar.  The newcomer watches me curiously, answering my question only after I’m halfway into a palate cleansing swig of water.  “Does anyone here not work here?”  They ask.  “And to answer your question, it does seem to come up a lot for me.  Makes for excellent sunrises.”

“Not sunsets?”  Mark asks.

“I’m a morning person.”

I nod sadly.  “No one’s perfect.”  I’ve found that repeatedly over my lives.  Some people get close, some people never stop trying, but everyone has little things that keep them from the ultimate aspiration.  “And we’ve all got a little shared stake in Bastion’s.  So, cycles?”

“Oh!  Yes!  We’re always meeting each other here as if we’ve arrived roughly around the same period.  Subjective, perhaps a span or two?”

“…span being ten subjective days, or thirty?”  I ask, trying to not sigh as we run into the most inconvenient problem that the between refuses to correct for.

They look back at me with a similar exhausted expression, even if their voice is as honeyed as ever.  “Is a day one sleep loop, or three?”

“When is it ever three?”  Mark demands to know.

I don’t blame him, he’s still young.  The stranger and I answer at the same time, saying “Two suns.” With a unified wave toward Mark.  I answer their own question that my subjective days are one loop.  Eventually we sort out their definition for a span landing around a subjective week, and I refuse to do the math to smooth it out.  “So you have friends here too?”  I ask.

They light up, their plain face showing a slim modicum of joy.  “Oh, yes!  Already moved on at this point, they’re both new.  But I… I like them.  We’ve met a few times now.  And we have shared [Friendship] traits now, too, so we’re drawn to each other here.”

“You can do that?”  Mark looks surprised.

I don’t look surprised, but while I sort of knew that was possible, I haven’t encountered it here.  You don’t get traits in the between.  You get rewards and upgrades from worlds and lives and this is neither.  We always come home to here, but we’re not alive.  “We all just have doors to Bastion’s, so we meet up.  Cycles, though, yeah.  I’ve seen the pattern.  Sometimes people arrive way too early, though.  Or late.  Depending.”  I distract myself from remembering subjective months almost completely alone, not knowing what I was waiting for, not wanting to stray into the halls and valleys of the between without being able to leave a note or see Ellin or Molly or Jules or Six or Mark one more time.  My distraction takes the form of refilling an empty cup for our visitor.  “You owe us three marks for this, or a fun anecdote about your last life.”  I tell them.

“Fun?”  They give a bland smile.  “I don’t have fun.  I have adventure.”

“Three marks then.”  Mark chuckles.  “Six, with the other one?”

“Yes?”  Six says as he approaches the bar and catches Mark’s comment.

Mark rolls his eyes.  “No, I was talking about the marks.”

“You are the Mark here.”  Six feigns confusion.  Or maybe it’s not feigned at all.

I certainly don’t have to feign being irate.  “No, no, this comedy routine exists in every single civilization that makes it to the invention of broadcast communication.  You’re two steps away from asking me who when was.”

The stranger comes to my rescue.  “Well.”  They eloquate.  “I could tell you about the time I was riding a mutaform wren about three miles up at almost exactly the time that a band of plucky misfits failed to stop a mad wizard from unleashing his world spanning spell that turned all birds into flowering plants.  It was honestly a very impressive spell!  It didn’t even kill the birds, technically.  Or at least, not mine.  The mind was intact, and somewhat content with being a colorful piece of flora.”

“Were you…” Mark asks slowly, “perhaps one of those plucky adventurers?”

“Oh, quite so.”  The stranger nods.  “We’d… ahem.  We were distracted.  For some time.  Stalled, you might say.”

I’ve heard a variation on this story a dozen times before.  It’s really kind of fascinating how many of us, when presented with a pressing problem, simply don’t feel the pressures of time and urgency the same way.  Knowing that death isn’t an ultimate failure makes it easier to get distracted.  This also combos in a truly horrifying way with certain mental health conditions that our living bodies can have.  If you would have had problems with paying attention before, knowing that your focus is never really required certainly doesn’t make it any easier to avoid flights of fancy.

“I would say that almost constitutes fair payment.”  Six nods at the small story.  “I have two questions, though.”  The stranger makes a sweeping ‘go on’ hand gesture, and the golem obliges.  “First, is there a between reward for falling from three miles up in the sky?”

The stranger flushes red, and I am again amazed at how their utterly boring face makes the blush look like almost nothing.  “There… ahem… there may be, yes.  A pawful of marks of faith for every… well, not ‘mile’, but every long measure of distance fallen all at once.  And then [Erring Skydiver] for hitting the three measure mark all at once without intention.  Now, believe me when I tell you, I’ll be finding space in my aura layer for it!”  They raise their glass me as they drain the last of it.  “What was the other question?”  They ask Six as they make to stand.

“Was there also a reward for surviving the fall?”  Six asks simply.

“I wouldn’t know.  That was also my last memory from that life.”  The stranger offers a bland grin to go with their cheerful and charismatic words.  “And now, friends, my companions are waiting for me out there somewhere.  Thank you kindly for the drinks, and the company.  Perhaps we’ll cross paths again one day.”  They head to an open wall, waving to us as they do so, and then vanish into the between without stalling.

“Well that was fun.”  I mutter. Then I turn my gaze to Six and slide a mug across the bar to him.  “Also try this.”

He takes a tentative sip and grimaces.  “This is… unpleasant.”  This is actually the most expression I’ve ever heard in his tone.

“Yeah, Mark left some back here and I needed to get rid of it.”  I offer an apologetic smile.  “Hey, it looks like the others are setting up a game.  Do you wanna go join them?”

“I do, if only to escape my own mistakes.”  Mark sighs.

That’s a feeling that I know all too well.  But at least we can feel it together.  It takes me until after a comforting hug and getting everyone seated and making it halfway through the traditional argument about which ruleset we’re using before I realize that Mark wasn’t talking in the broad and metaphorical sense, but more immediately, and specifically about whatever he’d made behind the bar.

I let the shared laughter chase away the darkness for a little while, though.  I’m sure we can make new mistakes to regret later.