(TLO) Chapter 42: The Stain of Individuality (Patreon)

The world remained covered in the tainted stain of mist. However, where it had once been all mist, white enough to put the bridal gown of any woman, it was now no more than a simple sheen, a hue on the world around them.

Behind it they saw the trees they’d known to be there. They were as black as he remembered with the mildest stains of green from the moss that grew on their rough barks with bountiful black leaves that only sprouted as high as they were tall, blanketing the world from any possibility of sunlight. If one did not look up, the trees would’ve seemed old and decrepit. Lifeless and without leaves.

A replica led Seth and the others through what seemed a strange amalgamation of woods and forest with little puddles of swamp water that they mostly avoided. It gave an odd touch of black to the night with smatterings of green that did not quite stand out. They lurked like the shadows of dead things in the wake of the living. Each tree stood, almost equidistant from themselves, fading judges in a test of fear.

Seth and the others had been walking for two days now, interchanging leadership. Their new guide each time was chosen simply by how quickly he walked. Where one’s speed would wane, another’s would pick up. It happened always, as though one substituted strength for the other.

In two days they had changed three leaders. It was a worry to behold. Considering they had once walked longer without rest at the leadership of Jabari, they felt no logical reason why any of them should grow tired. Although, Jabari had made sure they were never too hungry to walk back then. Now, they were simply never hungry, so they moved on.

Seth had never believed the forest around the school would be so vast, so encompassing. In his time in the seminary, he and his brothers had been forced to climb and crawl, to step easily as well as hurriedly, yet there remained too much of the forest they knew they had not seen. Through the haze of the test he had come to realize the rest of him—the multiple Seths bickering and leading—were no more than hallucinations of some sort. He blamed them on the mist. Whatever else it was, he was certain it held hallucinogenic properties. Once he was out of the mist, his mind would clear.

For now, he could do naught but move.

“This is taking too long,” a replica grumbled, his voice carrying all the way from the back of the group. “Can’t we go any faster.”

Seth frowned, the replica leading frowned and said nothing, though much rested on the tip of his tongue. If the replica complaining wanted to go faster than they already were, all he had to do was quicken the pace. He looked back, spared the replica a simple look and knew his intentions were conveyed clearly.

The replica’s grumble was silenced effectively.

Returning his attention to the path before him, their leader trudged on.

Where they were headed was questionable. None of them knew, yet all of them knew. They were headed in a direction guided by a knowledge they did not have, and yet they all possessed. The thought of it was annoying, made worse by the fact that they had no other guide by which to navigate themselves.

After a few more steps, one of the following replica made a sound. He called to Seth and Seth turned back, steps slowing but not halting.

“Have you ever considered,” the replica said, “that perhaps this is not the real world?”

Seth gave it a moment’s thought before discarding the notion. “No.”

This world was real. What wasn’t real were the three men standing around him when he was barely even fifteen.

“Well I believe we should give it a thought,” the replica argued. “What if… and hear me out here. What if this is all in our head?”

“As intelligent as that might sound, it has no logical basis,” Seth returned.

The replica chuckled. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s four of us.”

“Three of you having plagued me for over a year.”

The replica’s pace seemed to quicken to the leading replica’s discomfort and the leader was forced to hasten his own steps, unprepared to surrender leadership. Especially not when the attempted usurper was beginning to succumb to the concept that the world was not real. Who knew where he would lead them in that line of madness.

“Just think about it,” the replica pressed. “We know where everything is even when we are not supposed to.”

Seth shrugged.

“Alright,” the attempted usurper slowed his pace and turned slowly to address the others, slowing everyone’s advancement. “We are in a forest…”

“With luscious green,” Seth mocked.

“Then how do we know that there’s a mountain up ahead,” the replica continued, ignoring Seth. “And how do we know that the thing in that mountain is what we are looking for and is strong enough to kill us all with a single thought?”

Seth paused.

Behind him everyone came to an equal halt. Seth wasn’t sure he liked the idea of going to something capable of killing him with a single thought. He also wasn’t sure what that thing was, but he was sure of one thing…

We should not have said that, he thought, attention narrowing on Seth.

“Well, there are a lot we should never have said,” the replica said. “Yet here we are, making our way to our own doom.”

The replica was instigating and Seth knew it. If he didn’t, then he was more retarded than he thought.

Tired of it all, a replica rounded on the replica so that he was forced to take a step back.

“Do you think this a game?!” he hissed. “Some blatant charade for which to find jest and confusion. Not that long ago we were threatened with disjointing... Disjointing! For no better crime than tardiness. Even the seminary wouldn’t dare it, and they are nothing but a group of old men who have no right being alive for as long as they have been.”

The assuaged replica stared back defiantly in the wake of his assailant’s anger. He always knew one of them would have to break first. It seemed he was the one to go. “I merely—”

“You have merely done nothing!” the replica cut him off. “Do you think sowing any form of discord now of all times is the best strategy? Did you think you would offer a counter position and we would all fall in line? Look around you. Do you think your choice of words acceptable?”

They were. The replica knew this as he knew the sky was black and light had not touched it in over three days. He knew it as he knew they would die should they reach the mountain. He knew it as he knew—

Gently, as if forced by the same knowledge that guided them, his attention shifted so that he paid attention to the world around him while his gaze remained defiantly on himself.

No. He had been wrong. His words had been logical. They had been correct. But they had also been mistimed.

Around him, Seth and the leading replica, both of them tired and silent, stared at him. In their eyes he saw something akin to fear but was not. It dawned on him then that they had been moving, motivated by nothing, not even the knowledge that guided them. It puzzled him to bafflement. Were they not all one? Had they all not known what he had known?

“Do you really believe that?” the replica that confronted him stepped closer, crowding him, forcing him back until his back was pressed up against a tree. “Do you really believe that you handle the information we have the same way we do? Do you really think yourself that unique; that special, that you can anticipate us?” He watched his eyes narrow, grey irises turning a darker shade, clouding over so that they were a deeper grey. “Is this hubris what guides you?”

The replica frowned at being talked down to, worse of all, by another replica. He would not allow this replica berate him. A mistake had been made but it was no excuse for this. There were no leaders here, only equals. And that a replica—a fragment of a broken mind—would talk down on him was tantamount to sacrilege in any religion.

Even Seth was not superior here. In this world, they were all the same. There was no leader until the end—no original.

So he did what people do when guided by their simmering rage. He stepped forward. The anger of embarrassment fueled his step, and he forced his assailant to step back. Beside him his hand flexed as his breathing sharpened. He felt his shoulders tense in the way they did whenever the sparred in Reverend Domitia’s lessons—whenever he thought he’d found a chance to end his spar.

“You’re giving yourself a terrible advice,” Seth said from beside him.

The replica turned his head to look at Seth, his rage never leaving him. He would strike soon. He knew and doubted there was any here who did not know this.

“And why is that?” he asked, keeping the replica that was the source of his ire in his periphery as he attended Seth.

Seth shrugged. “I just suddenly don’t think it’s a good idea to touch each other.” He pointed at the replica’s assailant. “Notice how he didn’t touch you?”

It took the replica only a moment to run through his memory and find the truth. Since the beginning of the test, since walking out of the mist and finding himself, he had made no physical contact. There had been observations and unfriendly banter—if he could call it banter—but no physical contact.

The knowledge quelled his anger like a wet blanket over a bright flame. What would have been the consequence? What would have happened if he had struck the other replica?

He could speculate, but even that would be speculation founded on nothing.

He returned his attention to the replica he’d almost struck and the look on the replica’s face made him scowl. He had known of this; considered the possibility. The fucking bastard had stimulated it. The discovery came with the daunting realization that they all had been anticipating who would break first. But while the others had been content to watch and wait, he and this one had been working to instigate it in each other. He’d been playing checkers while his opponent was playing chess. The smirk on his lips was proof enough of it.

“Keep your head about you, Seth,” the replica told him, still smirking that God awful smirk. “We don’t need you slipping.”

With that, the replica turned away from him and continued on the path they were all following. His leadership restored.

………………………………

Seth watched this all happen in relative silence. He’d warned Seth for the simple reason of not having liked the game both of them were playing. He did not care who won it, but he found himself caring how they won it. For reasons he did not understand, the how mattered a great deal to him. If any of them were to break, he would rather they break because they were weak and not manipulated.

And what do you care how they break?he thought. There must be only one.

With equal disinterest, he answered himself, Perhaps, then followed along. At this point who knew who the original was. But perhaps that was the point. If the original didn’t recognize themselves, then there would be no problem when any of them became the original at the end of this.

He took two steps then paused at the gentle muffle behind him. He turned to afford the replica behind him his mild attention and met the replica frowning.

“Why did you save him?” the replica asked.

Seth studied him, not needing to ponder on the question. Their collectiveness had since begun fading to the mist. Individuality had come to stay. It was odd to know that once upon a time there had been only one Seth who’d borne individuality. Now, it seemed they had been contaminated by it.

We are no longer strong, are we?

The thought rested at the tip of his tongue, but he did not offer it to the replica. He would not. After all, they each had to face the same test. Perhaps it had been different at the beginning, perhaps as a collective they had feared the same thing. What of now? He wondered. What do we fear now that we are apart?

He afforded the replica a gentle smile. His answer would not matter.

“None of us would go down so easily,” he said.

“But we both know that’s a lie,” the replica smirked. It held the whisper of foreboding, a wandering omen of tasteless despair.

For a moment Seth wondered if he’d been worried about the wrong replicas. But only for a moment.

They all—all of them—wondered who the real Seth was. They may play at some form of superiority, but the truth was known to them. They were not—all of them—real. And each one of them wandered in this misty presence, wondering who was, seeking who wasn’t, and attempting to become who would be.

How quickly they had failed this test, Seth realized. How quickly they had succumbed to their fear.

The replica walked past Seth as he pondered, and took leadership between the both of them. His smirk slid away as he did and Seth wondered if he had put on a mask now or had merely taken one off. This was the problem with Seth, a problem existent since the very beginning. He rarely ever knew when he was no longer putting on a mask. Then again, with Jabari he had been too scared and confused to pretend.

Seth shook his head. He certainly needed to know if he was the original. It weighed on his mind as he followed behind the replica.

Just the way the collective had been tainted by the stain of individuality belonging to the original, the original could have been tainted by the stain of the collective.