(TLO) Chapter 41: Cognitive Dissonance (Patreon)

“I need silence,” Seth mumbled, needing sleep more than silence.

He needed a quiet world and a quiet mind. A silence that would let him think before he would drift. The replicas’ bickering and constant conversation was unwelcomed. Left to him, he would slit their throats and have only one left. Four was three too many. There could be only one. It was what was meant to be.

This fracture of a mind did no good. It did little in the path of unison. That they would disjoint their own was a greater discomfort than it had any right to be. And that they would keep the meaning of what it meant to be disjointed from him was a greater worry.

But his silence was necessary. If he was to win against the others, he needed to be calm, unpredictable. He needed to be very much unlike them.

One of the replicas turned his attention to Seth, seated in the mist, watching and thinking and almost found pity for him. He had never truly been a confident child. He had been arrogant, stubborn, defiant even. But he had never been confident. Confidence had been left to the purview of Jonathan and Derek. With the headaches and the music, he had never had time for confidence.

The replica let out a soft breath as he eased himself to sit, while the others bickered amongst themselves. He understood the noise now. Why Seth had always hated it. He had never understood why he had always felt a willingness to trade it back for the headaches, but he was beginning to understand the reason now. With the headaches, he had still been able to focus despite the discomfort. But with this?

He turned his attention from Seth, seated in the dirt in confusion, to himself bickering with himself. The cognitive dissonance was repulsive. To watch himself bicker with himself was disconcerting.

How had he tolerated it for over a year? He wondered.

Perhaps ending it was the right thing. Should they find a silence regardless of their opinion of it, maybe Seth would find a way out of this mist and into some modicum of freedom.

Freedom was necessary to pass this test, after all.

Freedom was necessary for most things. It was why Seth had taken to wandering the night when he should be sleeping, like his mates. There was something about the silence and the darkness that put him at ease. At first it had been occasional, a reprieve from the nightmares that came once in a while. The death and sadness his trip with Jabari had left him with. The loss of a home he’d thought he’d already put behind him the moment he’d decided to board the ship with Jabari rather than call out for help to the Baron’s soldiers.

How wrong he had been to think a simple decision made in a single moment could be lived without regret. The human mind wasn't so rigid in its ways. There were rarely ever important decisions that were never questioned. In the brief time he'd been in the seminary Seth had learned it quite harshly.

The silence of the night had embraced him, and he had walked it free of these worries, plagued only by the minute fear of what Igor would do to him should the priest ever catch him wandering when he should be sleeping. So far no one had noticed. No one had caught him on his nightly escapades.

For that, Seth had always been glad. For during those moments, he had almost felt truly free.

Slowly, the confusion lifted from Seth’s fatigued mind. He watched one of the replicas watch him. Two more argued about the mundane. There was a fourth. But the fourth was not important. Or perhaps it was better to say the fourth was the most important.

But it didn’t matter. What mattered was leaving the mist.

Suddenly there was a shift in the nonexistent. It strong enough to pull Seth from his reverie. It was no more than a trembling of instincts, but each of the replicas grew quiet. It was as if they had come to a collective agreement in the silence. There had been no preamble, no realization, merely an understanding of danger should they not leave the mist.

“One of us…” Seth said slowly.

“… has gone astray,” a replica finished in sudden realization.

There had been no sign, no symptom. There had been no shifting in the world or induced reactivity. There had been nothing. All of them had simply known. Like the man named Judas in one of Josiah’s stories, one of them had made an active decision they should not have. One of them had chosen to work against the collective good.

The problem now, was that none of them knew who it was.

It seemed Seth was not the only one here with a mission. A replica had begun to act.

Seth turned his attention from the replicas, their bickering long since forgotten. For the sake of all their survival they had to leave this place; they had to pass this test.

“You shouldn’t have spoken of disjointing,” a replica told him.

Seth ignored the replica. After all, he wasn’t the one who had mentioned disjointing. That had been one of them. He was fairly certain of it.

The statement was irrelevant. Whatever replica had mentioned the concept of disjointing had said what he had said. A jest, though it may have been, it had brought consequences along with it. All Seth could do now was move on from it.

“We will not be disjointing anyone,” a replica said. “We are all here, none of us late.”

One of the replicas cocked a quizzical brow. “All of us?”

A pregnant silence followed his question. Was one of them missing, Seth wondered. Had they, in their scrambled fray, forgotten one of their own. Were they so engrossed in their journey to have paid so little attention.

The thought of it annoyed him and he opened his mouth to chastise the replica when another one spoke.

“Leave him,” he said. “We know he’s always present. Always watching.”

Seth turned his attention to the replica and found him confused. He cocked his head to the side, a question on the tip of his tongue.

“Who’s missing?” Seth asked.

How a simple question could bear with it so much dread was awe inspiring.

Rather than answer, the replica turned away from Seth and started moving. “We should hurry.”

“Why?” Seth asked, even as he picked himself up. “We still have time.”

At the head of the path, a replica looked back at the rest of them from over his shoulder. “Yes, we do.”

“So what’s the rush?” Seth asked, running a tired hand through his now groomed hair. He liked his hair neat and packed, tied up in a ponytail. That the others chose the same style did not sit well with him. It took away his individuality, something he didn’t like.

Seth watched the others and didn’t like what he saw. They had not always been this way, he knew that. At some point during their brief break, one of them had tied their hair up, eased it into a noble, sleek ponytail so that all of them were now identical. One of them had also once been shorter than the rest of them.

Seth panned his vision through them once more and found all of them to be the same. Someone had changed drastically, but he did not know who. Oddly, a part of him suspected he had been the one to do so. There was doubt there. He had always wanted to be neat and tidy, just like Jonathan. That was supposed to be enough reason to defend the fact that his hair had always been in a sleek ponytail. Now he wondered if he was wrong.

If he couldn’t trust what he knew anymore, it was going to make completing his quest a problem.

He returned his attention to the path before him and hurried on as he answered the question of what the rush was about.

“The rush is that while we still have time, it’s more than enough to lose ourselves. I remember how I get confused when I’m thinking with all of you in my head. I can’t afford to let that happen now.”

His own words brought a new worry to him. A worry that he might not be the one to come out in charge of his own mind at the end of the test.

He understood the test of fear now.

He had never been afraid of his minds. He had been terrified of something else. A strand of hair strayed into his vision and he eased it away with his hand, sliding it back into place. With an unnatural ease, he ran a gentle hand through his packed hair, returning it to its sleek composure.

Perhaps they had already run out of time. Perhaps he had already faced his fear and succumbed to it. Unfortunately, he could not bring himself to care.

So he followed as a replica led them.

He waded through the mist, he and the others following behind the replica in silence.

He may not be worried, but it was only a matter of time before one of them would broach the question.

All Seth needed to do was prepare for the pandemonium that would follow once it happened. After all, there could be only one. And he refused he was the only one beginning to have slow growing doubts about his identity.

So he knew they all wondered as they walked. And in the silence of their minds a simple question echoed quietly.

Which of them was truly Seth?