Sublife Crisis - Chapter 25 (Patreon)

I am still alive, and now back to post things.

_____

We have had more guests.

The elf is gone, vanished between one moment and the next, off to her next life.  Her lemonade left sitting on the counter, not a drop spilled when she moved on.  But she’ll be back.  I don’t know how, but I know, she’ll find her way back to us.

A pair came through afterward, mostly human, shorter even than me, lithe and fluid in their movements like they were partly made of liquid.  Whether they were friends, lovers, or enemies, I’m still not sure.  Mark and I had bet on it as the two of us worked together to organize the clutter we’d been building up behind the bar, but we never got an answer before they left.

They paid for their drinks, though, so they got a gold star from me.  The dragon that came through more or less robbed us of some of the better bottles we had left.  Partly our fault, for serving without payment up front, I guess.  I should have cut him off when Mark realized that the stupid lizard was talking around us, treating us like automatons and not people.

Now, there’s two people actually here. One is some kind of fire elemental snake that’s having a heated discussion with Six about how it feels to grow up as an artificial life form.  They’re sitting up in the library, having their conversation over a game of Lull Tricks, rapidly declaring their moves along with their conversational points.  I think they’re having fun?  It can be hard to tell with Six sometimes.  But I know him better than I know everyone else, and I think he’s having fun.

The other person is sitting over at the little stone and wrought iron table that Molly’s jar of lightbugs sits in the middle of, staring at it like he can siphon out some kind of bonus.  The fox-faced golden furred samurai is doing that because I lied to him, and told him that it would work.

“He’s really focused, huh?”  Mark whispers into my ear.

The two of us are crouched below the bar counter, ostensibly sorting through empty bottles that we’ve managed to save from being returned to nothing by the between.  I think half of these actually just eat heartbeats or marks or something in order to refill themselves, which is why they’re still here.  I don’t know about the others.

That’s less important right now.  Both of us have our eyes peeking out over the edge of the counter’s black polished surface, peeking at the fox as he narrows his eyes even further at the decoration.  I hold in a snicker, delighting at wasting his time.  “Very focused.”  I mutter, and then, unsure if he can hear me or not, I set a small trap.  “I’m sure he’ll get there.  Maybe he’ll figure out the trick with overfeeding it heartbeats.”

One of the samurai’s ears twitches in our direction.  He has really good hearing for someone sitting under a slowly spinning prop engine.  He’s also single minded, and oblivious.

The lightbugs in the jar start to glow brighter, then multiply.  A sound like distant violins picks up as the artificial little liltopods start to sing to each other in a recreation of their mating season.  The jar never outshines the lights of Bastion’s, even the low-luminescence lamps and hanging bulbs and floatflames we use.  But it does become easier to see as the fox focuses too long on trying to find the trick, and vanishes.

“Dumbass.”  Mark snorts.

“Honestly cannot believe that worked.”  The two of us rise up from behind the counter in unison, arms folded, heads cocked and eyebrows raised in mirrors of the same pose.  “What a… a…”

Mark elbows me lightly.  “Dumbass.”  He reiterates.  I give him a nod of agreement.  Sometimes, the simple terms fit best.

We’ve met this particular guest before.  Their companion, hopefully ex-companion, hasn’t returned to us yet.  But this one, the ‘teacher’, the optimizer who so casually waved a paw at the idea of annihilating cities just to earn more achievements, did.

It’s a harsh reminder.  And maybe one that I need, right now.  It’s so, so easy, when it’s just us.  When it’s just people I love and trust.  So easy to let my guard down, and say, “Well, just this once, right?”  But it isn’t.  It never is.  It leads to this.  To genocide and a focus on the statistical so singular that it overrides reason.

At least it makes this dumbass easy enough to deal with.  Combat doesn’t work right in the between; usually the most you can hope for is to waste someone’s time, as far as I know.  But we’ve got a lot of random stuff that wastes time, and spinning a simple trap for a simple optimizer feels like a very satisfying use of my own heartbeats.

“Hoy!  So!”  Ellin jolts upright from where she was pretending to sleep on the bar, three seats down from us.  One of her horns glistens in Bastion’s warm lighting from where she dunked it in a water bowl.  Or at least, I hope it’s water; Bastion’s hasn’t had a place to bathe properly for what feels like lifetimes, and while we don’t pick up body odors at the same rate, no one enjoys the sticky sensation of horns coated in beer.  “That was hilarious, by the way, Luri.  Good one.  So, who do we think is gonna wander in next?”

“Can’t be anyone worse.”  Mark complains as he passes her a stack of napkins.

Ellin stares at the coarse and barely absorbent paper with a curious frown for a couple dozen heartbeats before a drop of something falls from her horn with a plip onto her nose.  “Oh.”  She starts trying to clean up whatever her drama has gotten all over her head.  “Also don’t say that!  It could always be a screamer.  We haven’t had one of those in a while though.”

A chill cuts into my limbs at her words.  I wasn’t really listening, instead half watching Jules help Six clear the small library table, the two of them dropping down to the ground floor of Bastion’s and utterly ignoring our carefully placed steps.  The elemental is gone too, though Six seems to be in a pleasant mood, so I suppose their conversation went well.  It’s almost enough to help me ignore Ellin’s grim omen.

Screamers don’t actually come to Bastion’s that often, and there’s two types of them that get dealt with differently.  But when they do show up, it sort of ties back into that thing about how you can’t stab someone in the between.  No, all you can do, if you want to hurt people, is waste their time.  And screamers are very, very, very devoted to wasting your time.

I don’t want to think about it.  “Make a new friend?”  I ask Six as he and Jules approach the bar.

“Yes.”  He nods rigidly, but there’s a small smile on the golem’s grey fleshed face.  “We spoke of many things.”

“Meanwhile, here I sit, neglected.”  Jules bemoans, two of his tentacles coming up to the closest thing he has to a forehead as he swoons.  “Secret plots and new companions and poor me, oh, my, just all by my lonesome and-“

“Hey Jules, you want to talk about Luri’s new book before I have to go?”  Mark earns the title of intercessor that the between ascribes to us every time we wake up here.  “Cause, and I hate to do this to all of you, I’m out of here in a couple subjective hours.  Don’t wanna make a big deal of it, but…” He shrugs.  “It’s been a long one, huh?”

We smile at each other.  It has.  We’ve been here for some time together; enough that we’re reaching the point where we’re gorged on each other’s company.  But it’s been a delight to have them all here with me.  And because of how long we’ve had, how many drinks and words and games and moments we’ve shared, there is less of a sting to Mark’s leaving.

He’ll be back.  We’ll be back.  We know it in our hearts.

“You know what I like?”  Mark says as Jules roils away to fetch the possibly stolen library book that I returned with this last life.  “I like how this feels like I’m on a sortie and not an exile.”

“Ooh, look at you, with your big words.”  Ellin reaches over to ruffle his hair, and Mark surprises her by snagging her hand and leaning down to give her a grinning kiss.  “Ambusher!”  She accuses him with a giddy laugh.

I join her in laughter.  It’s just that kind of mood right now.  Laughter and swelling happiness and no grim tidings can stick for too long before sliding off.  Mark rolls his eyes at the both of us.  “I mean, I’m not being kicked out.  I’m leaving to find something new to bring back.  It’s nice.”  He fidgets with his new coin, flicking the small disc of silver metal into the air with a spin before catching it, flipping it between his fingers, and making it vanish to his other hand.  Sleight of hand from who knew how many lives letting him turn a trick into something he can do without thinking.  “Hey.  Thanks for being here.”  He tells us all.

“Oh, don’t think that you can leave just yet, my dear man.”  Jules plants the book on the counter with a hollow thunk.  “Say your goodbyes in an hour!  Let us speak of the method on which nobility impacts the ties of family!”

“I… I thought we could talk about… trees?”  Mark looks like he wants to go back to hiding behind the bar, and I jut a hip into him to start pushing him out to the main room, happily throwing him into Jules’ waiting art critic maw.

It’s too late for Mark.  I should know; as the one responsible for bringing book club back, I have already been the vanguard of the experience of discussing interpersonal social strata secondary effects with Jules.  Which really, I shouldn’t say like it’s a bad thing.  There’s a certain built up complexity to how we start to view things, after a score of lifetimes; the way any of us look at the different ways the threads of a world connect, the way we see more and more the invisible influences.  We all have our own lenses, and talking about them is fascinating at least, and at best, is a good way to pass the heartbeats with companions.

“Hey, Luri.”  Ellin gets my attention.  “You know Jules is gonna leave along with Mark, right?”  She asks.

“Oh.  Uh.”  Ah, yes.  Good job Luri.  A mastery of languages forged over millennia, hard at work there.  “I didn’t.  But that’s fine!  I’ll say a real goodbye after they finish their chat.”

Ellin nods, and then glances at Six.  “And… we’re running low, too.”  She coughs into a closed fist.  A holdover gesture from being alive that we all have a dozen of and never actually bother to shake.  “Six and I were going to go wander?”

I smile at her.  Strangely, maybe, her half-question doesn’t bother me this time.  A million heartbeats is a long time, and we’ve spent almost seven million together.  Subjective months, this time around.  And it has been beautiful and lovely and we’ve managed to somehow refrain from utterly exhausting every consumable supply that we have in Bastion’s, but also, now, I am properly armored to survive some time alone.

“I’d offer to come along, but someone has to clean this place up.”  I say easily.  And also because I don’t really like wandering the between.  It’s… well, I’ve been out there before.  I’ve spent a long, long time in those endless halls and paths and nowhere places.  Bastion’s hasn’t always been my home in this place, and it’s easy to get lost in the endless architectural noise.  “But I hope you two have fun!”

“You will be alright, on your own?”  Six asks.

“Six, I’ve got fifty things I can spend my heartbeats on if I really don’t want to stick around on my lonesome.”  I start ticking things off on my fingers.  “There’s the tree, there’s the wine, there’s the other wine, there’s the mirror… heck, I could just read some books again as a way to pass quiet hours.”

“There’s the neon sign that we never have on.”  Ellin chimes in, pointing to one of the souvenirs hanging over the bar.

I always forget about the sign.  It being dark makes it easy.  My brain also trying to protect me from the multi-stage image rendered in neon of a semi-accurate medical replication of a drake lung.  I try not to be squeamish, but I have limits, and as long as the neon is dark, I can pretend that it’s not there.

“What sign?”  Six says placidly.  Six agrees with me, and comes to my defense every time this comes up.  And by defense, I mean that we act like the neon sign isn’t real and hope the others forget too.  I call this noble gaslighting.

“Okay, what about… I dunno, hope a merchant comes through or something.”  Ellin wisely drops the fight over the neon.  “Ah, you already know, you don’t need me giving you a list.”  She spins on her barstool.  “It’s been so good to see you happy, Luri.  Everyone else, too, but you… you’ve been good.”

“I have, haven’t I?”  I smile.  It almost doesn’t feel like a betrayal, to feel this good when there’s so many people I’ve left behind.  Who still haven’t joined us, and may never set foot or tail or hoof in Bastion’s.  I shove that pang of remorse away, and it leaves me with a shameful ease this time.  “Maybe it’s some residual from my last great fuckup.”

Six makes a motion to pat one of the arms I have folded on the counter.  “I’m sure your next one will be safer.”  He ‘reassures’ me.

We linger quietly together.  Just seizing control of our own heartbeat supply for a moment that stretches on into the horizon so we might be together.  Worry and fear are for later, loss and grief are for tomorrow.  Right now is for us.  Just to be here.

To be in Bastion’s, a place that is for all of us.  A place of sand and grit on the wooden floor, of walls adorned in art from styles that don’t even come from the same world let alone the same kind of color palettes.  A place where we are free to take our time, to ignore the perverse rush the between wants us to be in, to passively toy with abilities and feats and auras instead of actually grimly thirsting for them.  A place where the only thing we grimly thirst for is a good drink with good friends.

Mark leaves us with a wave and a shouted “I’ll miss you all!  Until next time!”  I hop out from behind the bar to press in on him with a crushing hug before he goes, and Ellin struts over to do the same, though she adds a passionate kiss to the mix.  Mark has to struggle against her as there’s a brief chime from his pocket, and something flickers in his vision. “The stupid [Coin] lets you buy social st-!“ is all he gets out before he isn’t there anymore.

We all falter a little, those of us hugging, when there’s a sudden gap.

“Hm.”  Jules vibrates, smoothing down his slightly wrinkled white frilly dress shirt that I have no idea why he is wearing.  The tentacles he had encircled us with winding back to him like dejected serpents.  “Well.  One more thing to worry about, these [Coins], isn’t it?”

“Worry not friend.”  Six blandly offers.  “I am certain we can, together, fail to care.”

“A fine point.”  Jules acquiesces with a wave of his limbs and a laughing flutter of his triangular eyes.  “Well.  I have one last thing to worry about now, my lovely dears.  It has been… an excellent time.  In the next afterlife, I should say I would do it all again with you.  But for now…” his voice starts to warble.  Modulating in time with Jules’ rising discomfort and panic.

I lean into him, and Ellin does the same with me, while Six just settles a cool grey hand on Jules’ flank.  “Hey.”  I say softly.  “You know, you’ve had some really shitty luck so far.  I bet you’re due for getting a body you actually like.”

“You would think so, but I can already feel Six clenching his internal organs as he struggles to not tell you that statistics do not simply work that way Luri.”  Jules, even panicking about his upcoming rebirth, cannot help but effortlessly slip into poking fun.  “Though perhaps I will find myself in a world where math works differently.”

“Has that happened before?”  Ellin asks bluntly.

Jules pats her on the horns, pulling his friend close with a muffled grunt.  “Oh Ellin.  It could have-“

And then he, too, is gone.  Ellin and I stumble to the dusty floor, and all I can think is that it is horrid that the best I can do for someone who is being thrown ever forward into situations they hate is to distract them until the moment happens.

I should be able to do more.  I’m so old, but I never feel like it.  Hundred of subjective years, feeling like I’m a kid who hasn’t grown up yet, because once you’re old you can fix all the problems.  You can do something.   Or at least do more.   But now here I am, dead again, after life number I-don’t-remember, and I can’t actually change anything.

Everything just keeps happening.  And even if we have spent what feels like enough time together, for now, it grates against every part of me to think that the choice to say goodnight was never my own.

My goodbyes with Ellin and Six are quiet, after that.  There’s an oppression that settles into our hearts when it’s time to go, that makes it hard to say the words that matter.  But that’s okay, because we cut it off early this time, and told each other what mattered hours ago.  That we love each other, that we understand, that we’ll be back.

I’m invited to come along, but I’ve had my fill of the endless and meaningless spaces out there.  Yes, there’s things to find, or things that we might see as having value.  But there’s also just so much pointless dross.  And when you’re as old as I am, and comfortable familiarity that matters to you is what you value, you do what I do and you stay in Bastion’s.

The two of them head out into the between.  Six says he’s looking to learn things, Ellin says she’s looking for hidden treasures, both of them are probably actually looking for the same thing which is to simply try to pick up some glimmer of what the between wants with us.  I wave to them as they leave, walking through a door that shuts in the wall behind them and leaves no trace it was ever there.

And then I’m alone.  But it isn’t so bad, this time.

I sit by myself, and just let the heartbeats pass.  The whirr of the engine fan, the occasional leftover drip of water in the sink behind the bar, the odd flicker of the wrought iron lamps through the archway that leads to our disconnected hallway, I let all of it wash over me.  Take me away, to a place where I don’t need to think or feel or do anything but just sit and breathe and be at peace.

Soon enough I get bored of that.  I’ve tried being everything from a monk to a spotter to a cultivator in my lives, and patience with the quiet has never really been something that was for me.  So I find myself standing, stretching my limbs out against the resistance of the pilot’s suit as I survey my now-personal domain.

It takes me about eight thousand heartbeats to clean up the bits and bobs that we’ve left out of place around Bastion’s.  The wooden board game Six was playing with his fire elemental compatriot gets packed away and replaced on the shelf.  The napkins and single wrapper of a candy bar that the elemental must have brought in get swept aside, vanishing into the air with a satisfying vibration of the void, while the ceremonial clay drinking bowls that I actually want to keep get taken downstairs so I can wash them.  I collect all our cups and bottles, actually; all the ones Mark and I didn’t get to by now.  And spend our infinite supply of water cleansing them, diluted alcohol or fruit juice meeting the same fate as all other discarded things.

I find a cluster of marks on a table; a tip someone must have left, perhaps.  I add them to my collection and try to remember that in however many decades when I see them next I will need to split them with the others.

I waste time undoing the sorting that Mark and I did, rearranging the bottles and clay urns one more time.  I also hide that tiny fern Ellin brought back amid the glass shelves, waiting for someone to ask if they could drink it.

I read a book again.  My favorite perfectly preserved creased and worn copy of a space adventure.  I do my best to not skim, and I enjoy it even my hundredth time through.  It adds a notification to my incoming messages from the between, which I vaguly remember will be about a bonus to spaceship crafting or something like that.  I don’t bother reading it, I don’t care.

But it does remind me that I have one message left to unpack from my last life.  One I have… well, not been dreading.  Simply not doing, because there were more important things going on.

I decide in a moment of confidence to prove that I am not lying to myself, and clear my incoming message log.  The first one is a spaceship crafting bonus.  Two whole percent to my work speed, a thing that I am sure will be of use in my next life.  The next one isn’t nearly so good at making me smile.

[You have died.

You lived the life of a planner and a plotter.

You lived the life of a conqueror.

You lived the life of one who did what they thought was best.

You lived the life of one who died happy.

Final grade : unavailable

Final true achievement : 4 (23 total)

Final reward : +2 Perk Burden, Ability Unlocked (Charisma): [Mind Blank]

The between calls.]

Yeah, I suppose I can’t argue with that.  I did, in truth, die happy.  So happy it followed me home and wouldn’t leave until I rewired my own false brain.

I laugh to myself at the thought.  “Home.”  I don’t even know if I can have a home; all of us who die over and over again seem to be eternal itinerants.  But I suppose if there is a home to be had, it’s with my friends.  That’s always how it ends up being when I’m living on a world, too.  The building is just an accoutrement, and what matters is the people you fill it with.

Not that I’m good at following that advice.  I tend to fill my buildings with books, cats or cat-analogs, and self-imposed isolation.  After all, I can’t feel bad about losing people if I don’t get close to too many of them.

I look down at the bar that I’m leaning on, where a row of emptied short crystal glasses sit.  I barely remember pouring and emptying them, which means I’ve already let the quiet hours get to me.  I think I lost some time to being morose and some more to staring at the meditation loop and probably a little more to trying to work up the courage to test whatever is in the bottle labeled “poison do not drink”.

I think it’s poison.  But I’m not actually sure.  And I really want to know, but I also don’t want to drink poison.  At least puzzling over that one is a distraction from moping.

Maybe I should have gone with Ellin and Six.  Being alone didn’t take more than fifty thousand heartbeats to really start messing with me.  Too late now, I suppose.

I whittle away a little more of my heartbeat supply by trying to see if there’s anything close to Ellin’s tiny fern in our book on plants, and then a little more by remembering to fully stock my perks.  There isn’t anything close to the fern, with it’s odd little double diamond leaves.  And I slot a speed reading perk back in, now that it could mean the difference between bringing a book home or not.

Ah, I did it again.  Home.

I’ve still got plenty of heartbeats, and I use a few staring around Bastion’s.  Perched up in the library with my elbows on the railing, watching the silent and still scene below of our mismatched tables, our collected mementos, our home.

It’s not a home without them.  And I don’t want to stick around just to keep the lights on.

Jules’ little ecologium with the miniature tree on an even more miniature hill looks almost regal, blowing in false wind, a few leaves drifting to the ground as it starts to change with the season as I feed heartbeats into it.   I don’t have a lot left to give, but I give what I can.

Sometimes, I’m not the last one out, and I relish every last second with my friends.  But right now, I think, all I want to do is speed up getting back.  In a lot of my lives, I’ve heard that you can’t go home again.  But I can, and I am, as ever, impatient to get on with it.

My last thought from my falsely assembled between form, watching that wonderfully crafted little tree sway in the breeze, is that I think I understand why Molly does this.  It’s nice, to feel like I’m choosing.

And then my heartbeats run out.

And I go last.