Content Warnings

BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER

This story is about disassociation/derealization, death (including death by suicide), grief and mourning, recovery, and finding meaning in an absurd and random world. It also touches briefly on dysphoria, self-harm, and alcohol abuse.

2008/04/05
When he saw the shape, way off in the morning mist, Felix Arthur Kipp assumed that it was a deer and went about his business. It would be another four hours before he went to work, and he had a routine to go through, so he did. Felix ate breakfast, read the newspaper, brushed his teeth, and went outside to walk the dog, at which point he realized that there was a naked person standing in the field to the east.
Felix didn't know how to respond to this. It simply did not compute. His nearest neighbor lived a kilometer in the opposite direction and 78-year-old Brenda was not prone to naked somnambulism (thank God). Nor, in fact, did he recognize this person; they looked to be in their twenties, sort of pear-shaped, with a round face and curly hair hanging down to their shoulders. They didn't look like anyone he knew in Hornor's Crossing, and this was a very small town. It was as though this person had fallen out of the sky, which would certainly go a ways towards explaining why they were a total wreck: feet caked in mud, twigs and leaves in their hair, and shallow, bloody scratches all over their body, like they had just walked directly through brush. Also, no clothes at all. That was still sinking in.
Felix didn't react. The person — a woman, by the look of it — didn't react either. They sorta… stared at each other until the dog bounded over to say hi. Ben, the yellow Lab, who was always so excited to meet new people, made a beeline across the field and trotted right up to the girl and started licking her fingers, held limply at her sides. The woman recoiled, but did not lash out or step away. If anything, she seemed… confused. It wasn't as though she'd never seen a dog before, but… she clearly didn't know what to do with the sensation of wet slobber on her fingers, or the soil beneath her feet, or the cool misty air swirling all around her. Let alone what to do with herself.
Eventually, he asked, "Are you okay?"
The woman shook her head frantically. For the first time, Kipp recognized that her face was streaked with tears.
"Please," she said. Her voice was raspy and weak, like she'd been shouting for a long time. "Please… help."
He did.
2019/07/24
Penelope Gore woke up. She laid in an unfamiliar bed, stared at a strange ceiling, and for a moment, she was profoundly confused. Then she remembered: this is a motel. I'm here in Ontario because of work. Her disorientation went away immediately, and she dedicated that mental energy to pondering the feasibility of five more minutes in bed. Gore glanced at the clock on the nightstand, next to her contact lens case. She rolled over, indecisive… then did a double-take. There was a folded piece of paper under the case. Unexpected. Penelope sat up, slid her contacts off to the side, and brought the document closer to her face so she could read.
Generally speaking, amnesticization works because of the flexibility of the human brain. Missing memories don't break the whole system; people just sorta fill in the gaps and go about their day, unless given cause to do otherwise. Like… a secret message from a forgotten version of yourself. In this case, a letter… talking about a crisis… and a crime… to which Penelope Gore may be an accessory… or even an accomplice.
Again.
"Oh, here we go," she muttered. How does this keep happening?! Gore was angry at first, then confused, then incredulous, and at the end of the message she almost burst into tears. It was too early for this. She hadn't even put her contacts in, for crying out loud.
Speaking of which… Penelope couldn't see the motel door very clearly, but she had finally realized that it was standing slightly ajar.
Someone is in here with me.
Researcher Penelope Gore was woefully unprepared for circumstances like these. She'd had some basic self-defense training, but she worked in sterile offices and cubicles and was (occasionally) asked to take a trip to some other similarly-controlled environment, so she could lend specific expertise. Tactical stuff is for Mobile Task Forces, not nerds, and under other circumstances, Penelope Gore would call the cavalry… but… given the content of the letter, that would probably be a bad idea.
If my "guest" wanted me dead, I wouldn't have woken up at all.
This was not particularly reassuring, but it was enough. Penelope opened the top drawer of the nightstand, exchanged the letter for her backup pair of glasses, put them on and scanned the room. No movement. Gore got up hesitantly, padded over to the motel door and examined the faint red smudges under the doorknob. Oh, that's definitely blood. It looks like Yesterday's Penelope didn't deadbolt it, and… "someone" picked the lock. Gore closed the door with one foot, then circled around, checked the closet (empty, aside from her baggage), pushed open the bathroom door, and stopped.
"Someone" was lying in the motel bathtub. They were wearing a black windbreaker, jeans, and boots. There was also an open bottle of whiskey (two-thirds gone) standing on the edge of the tub, next to a bloody folding knife.
no
Penelope Gore lunged into the room and yanked the shower curtain aside. Sure enough, it was who she'd expected: Mx. Wren Masterson.1 They were a total mess. Battered, bruised… and bloodstained. The mess was mostly on their shirt, but there was also dried blood all over their hands, and for one horrible second, Penelope thought they were dead. She fell to her knees next to the tub and started searching for a pulse. "Wren! No, no, what the-"
"What the fuck?" They were awake. Clearly uncomfortable, disoriented, but alive, awake, and staring her right in the face. Gore had a hand on their throat, which was… awkward, given the circumstances.
"Are you okay?" she managed.
Wren blinked. "Uh… no? Where the hell am I?" They paused. "When am I?" Another moment of hesitation. "You wear glasses, Penelope?"
"This is, uh, Wednesday. July 24. And… no, not generally." Penelope tried to find something to do with her hands and failed, so she just stood up instead. "This is Room 5. Cardinal Motel. Outside-"
"The Crossing?" All the blood drained out of Wren's face. "I'm in Hornor's Crossing?! With the Foundation investigating my fuckup?! No, no, no-" Masterson struggled to rise from their position in the bathtub and mostly just flailed around helplessly. "Oh God I don't remember anything about this place, no exits, I — Penelope, I trusted y-"
"Whoa, whoa, slow down! You're okay! Wren, I… I know this is all very strange, but I think we're fine. We're safe."
"Safe?! How could I possibly be safe?! How did I-" Masterson started giggling. Or were they crying? Possibly both. "'Well, how did I get here?!'" They tossed their hands up dramatically, then let them fall back into their lap.
Definitely giggling. Manic, scared.
Penelope knelt down again and put a hand on their shoulder. "You are here, Wren Masterson," she said. "Doesn't matter how. You're here with me, steakshift, and you're safe, I promise."
They believed it, because it was true. So they calmed down a bit.
Eventually, Gore asked, "What's with the knife?"
Masterson glanced at it, surprised. "That's… mine." They started to pick it up, then saw where all the blood was coming from. "Oh shit. If that's a relapse it's a weird one."
Yesterday's Wren had left a message, too, carved on their inner left forearm. Not deep, but… painful. Memorable. Two digits: 2 3.
The two of them looked at the injury for a while. Neither of them said anything. Eventually, Wren declared, "That's meaningless, though."
Penelope grimaced. "Clearly it's not? You just don't get whatever it means. Yesterday's date, for one."
"No, that's just it, I get it too well. Genre-savvy, remember? This is… weird."
"Oh. Really. 'Weird'." Penelope Gore gestured around the motel room. "All the circumstances in play, and this is the weird bit, the self-harm?"
"Well, admittedly, I am really, really hung over right now, and the last time I got proper smashed was… late 2016? I did some self-destructive shit then too. At least that was funny… relatively speaking." Wren Masterson contemplated existence from their current position, then realized that they were fully clothed and utterly wrecked in a bathtub. "Would you mind… giving me some privacy?"
"Oh! Not at all," Gore exclaimed, turning on her heel. "It's not like it's my motel room, or I have shit to do today. I'll just deal."
"Roll with them punches, babe. That's my philosophy." Masterson fought to remove one of their boots.
She didn't take the bait. Instead, Penelope read the letter three more times while Wren was in the shower, stashed it, and got dressed, thinking. How do you sign a message to your future self, remind her what she's all about? Seal it with a blow to the gut. Rebecca. Pow. There was no way she could share this with anyone, let alone Masterson. Too many variables in play already. Who knows what would happen if she dropped this bombshell. Yesterday's Penelope might have had a degree of trust in Yesterday's Wren, but those people weren't here now. She had to think very, very carefully about what she introduced to this volatile equation.
"Hey, uh… Penelope? Can I borrow a shirt?"
Masterson was leaning midway out from behind the bathroom door. They looked mortified. They had a towel wrapped around their torso, and their silhouette looked… different. "What?" Gore said.
"I got lots of blood on my old one. I don't seem to have a go-bag, which is… odd… so I need a shirt. Any shirt. I'll give it back, or even give you one of my nice ones. Quid pro quo."
"Sure. Absolutely. Don't worry about it." Penelope dug around in her own luggage and pulled out a hoodie. Then she paused. "Do you want me to, like… toss it over to you?"
"…yes. Thanks."
She lobbed it through the bathroom door and studiously looked the other way. A few minutes later, Wren emerged from the bathroom, drying their hair with a towel. All too late, Penelope realized that she'd provided an entirely inappropriate garment: it was webcomic merch, emblazoned with a dog in a kitchen on fire. The shirt didn't fit well, either. Too small. Unconstrained, Masterson's frame was not as slim as Gore's.
Penelope tried not to react and failed miserably. Wren noticed. They shrugged. "'This is fine.'"
"Okay." Gore navigated past her uninvited guest without making eye contact and stepped into the bathroom.
"It really is fine," Masterson said, but their voice was low and despondent. "I normally wear a binder but I'm not supposed to sleep in it. So I'm… giving myself some breathing room. It is fine. Please, don't make it weird."
"Okay. I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Well… me too." Wren plopped down onto the bed and jammed their hands into the pockets of the hoodie. "As someone who just sorta showed up, drunk, in your bathtub, I feel the need to apologize. This shit keeps landing on your stoop for some reason. I get distracted and diverted, lose my tracking, but this… doesn't happen, scene transitions are normally tidier than this." They bit their lip. "Hm. Not just hung over. Queasy."
Gore re-emerged from the bathroom with her contacts in. Finally. "Did you say 'scene transitions'? You mean like a movie?" She immediately regretted asking.
"Mmm, it's in that vein. Dissociation, derealization, that's sorta like a movie, because I feel one step removed. This is different. You know how Tarantino movies tend to be nonlinear, because he's only got a couple of tricks? It's like that, except… there's supposed to be continuity, a logical 1+2=3, even if it's in a wonky order. There's a pattern the characters follow even if they don't realize it. Here… there's a weight in my stomach. Like I've skipped a step, lunged off a cliff. I feel…" They stared off into the middle distance. "I did something. It's got something to do with this, obviously," gesturing at their bandaged arm, "but there's also something actually important. I don't remember it. But I'm supposed to remember it! It's not part of the plot otherwise."
"This is… pataphysics again." Great.
"It is absolutely that thing! Pataphysics! Fuck me, this is narrative inertia. I cheated somehow and it's just catching up to me the morning after. Newton's Third, except I went on a wicked reality-bend last night and reality is gonna whip my ass today in return." They paused. "God, I hope it's just today. This is bad enough! Depending on what I did/didn't do, this could be a really, really bad week."

████

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"Something happened."

"some"?
"thing"?
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0 1 2 3 █ 5 █ 7 ██ 10 ████████ 17 ██ 23 .

2019/07/20
Felix Kipp kept up the act until "Mr. Harris" left the house. He watched the alleged "government employee" get into his white car, pretended not to look as they departed, and only let his guard down when he was absolutely sure he was alone.
The signal device was hidden in plain sight, next to his cell phone. It looked like a pager, but wasn't; it didn't connect to a real network, and didn't even need batteries. There was no keypad, just a power button. Binary. On/off. He had called it a "narrative device" once, when it was new, and that had immediately clicked with his student. They had developed such an excellent rapport, over the years. This will be happy news, but… difficult. Kipp toggled it twice in quick succession, then waited. A couple minutes later, the device beeped and printed a message:

HELLO HELLO BABY

which was the code phrase he expected. Step one complete. Next: off to work.
It's hard to keep secrets in a small town. Everyone shares the same landmarks, the same gossip, the same microculture. When the "normal state of affairs" is excruciatingly dull, like it is in Hornor's Crossing, every divergence from the norm is observed and relayed to an eager audience. One slip-up, and some good-hearted blabbermouth (like county clerk Myra Gibbons, bless her heart) will air out your laundry. One mistake. All it takes.
Felix Kipp had been keeping secrets all his life. Some were his own, but there was also information that had been shared with him in trust… a social contract that he took very seriously indeed. By his reckoning, a library is not merely a place to find books; it's a safe space where people can learn and build and ask for help if they need it. Oftentimes, that sort of help is technical. Sometimes it's more personal. The Crossing was small, but Felix knew many people who had needed help discovering who they really were, and as someone who had been outed a couple times in his twenties and thirties, he respected personal discretion above all else. Felix Kipp had been out of the closet a long time, but not everyone could live openly, and life in Hornor's Crossing had only reinforced the oldest lesson: people talk. Often carelessly.
That said… people don't talk about the things they don't see, and routine is exceptionally effective camouflage. If you do something conspicuous every single day, people will recognize that pattern, and so long as you maintain the broader outline of your routine, nobody will see the hidden step, because… well, what is there to see? It's just the town librarian, stopping yet again at the only gas station between his house and his workplace. Perhaps he's buying a lottery ticket, or a newspaper, or refilling the tank of his worn-out car. It doesn't matter. It's normal. People look past it. For this reason, literally no one in Hornor's Crossing had ever realized that Felix Kipp actually visited the gas station on a regular basis specifically because of the pay phone in the parking lot, which (as usual) started to ring just a split second before he plucked the handset off the cradle. Their timing was always eerily good, which was probably another function of the "narrative device"; he tried not to think about this too hard in the broader context of free will, cause and effect. Things just… work out, sometimes. When you let them.
Felix Kipp put the phone to his ear and listened: nothing. Then he cleared his throat and declared, "'I can't hear a thing'." Challenge…
A familiar voice spoke up from the other end. "'I have got no service'." Authenticated. Next: duress check.
"'You could call if you want'." Two paths from here: danger or safe, represented by "out in the club", and…
"'There's no one home'." Safe.
"'You're not going to reach my telephone'." Felix Kipp permitted himself a short laugh. The music references always seemed a bit on-the-nose, but they were fun and memorable, and given the forces they were dealing with… well, nothing wrong with whistling in the dark. "I had a visitor today. One of those, ah… 'custodians' you mentioned. He was curious about the mess. Wondered whether I'd seen any trespassers."
On the other end, Wren Masterson laughed. "Have you?"
Kipp affected the reedy wheeze of an old man short of breath. "'Why, heavens, no, I just sit around and read books all day. Nobody walks in those woods!'"
"Did he buy it?"
"Well, he didn't point the finger. You think they'll stick around?"
"Yes. You'll have new neighbors soon. They'll want to take care of the yard. Let them. Don't go back, ever. Try to forget it exists." There was a long pause. "Felix… I've said it before, but I can never say it enough: thank you. You've done so much for me and you've asked for so little in return. I owe you, man. I owe you everything."
Felix Kipp smiled, but it was bittersweet. Eleven years. "No," he said, "you don't. This was the right thing to do. So I did it."
"Yeah, well. Lots of people wouldn't. Or couldn't. I just happened to meet the one man who would. You're one of a kind, Felix. You showed me the way. You healed me when I was broken. I… I wouldn't be who I am without you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart." Masterson paused again. "I love you."
Wren had made it clear that using their name over the phone, even a deniable phone, would be a bad idea. Kipp was inclined to agree; it was still hard, though. You're supposed to address family by name. Especially when they picked their own name. He wrestled with his words awhile before speaking again, and when he did, Felix spoke from the heart. "You're the strangest, most wonderful person I ever met, S. You are… incredibly unique, not to mention the best apprentice an old librarian could ever imagine. I know this journey has been very long and difficult, but you did it. The weight is off our shoulders, and I'm proud of you. I love you. Our time has been such a gift. I know you'll do great things." The librarian started to suppress his grief, but ultimately let himself cry. This is so hard. "Are… will you ever visit again?"
"I… wish I could. I don't think that would be… wise, what with the, uh, cleanup crew." Wherever they were, Masterson was obviously having a tough time with this, too. He could hear the strain in their voice. "Maybe… you can visit me, instead."
"I would like that. Until then…" Felix Kipp mustered a laugh. "Keep circulating the tapes."
"Always."
He hung up.

23?

23.

"bullshit"

bias
reason
matter
never
observer
operator
person

"guy"

the
guy

"████████ ████, the ████████" .
(who?)

the ██████
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"Felix Kipp?"

dead m█n
"dead"?
box
black
real
fake
"████"
fake
real
white
void
"live"?
negative
hole
positive
lens
light
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library
scene
crime
murder
seat
book
page█
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???
gone
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gone

2019/07/27

Beloved librarian, historian and community activist FELIX ARTHUR KIPP (August 28, 1950 — July 23, 2019) will be laid to rest this Saturday, following visitation and memorial services at Reed's Funeral Home. As a resident of Hornor's Crossing since 1985, Felix is remembered by many friends, peers and patrons as a kind and gentle soul with a deep love of learning, culture, and a passion for true social equity. Everyone is invited to pay their respects and share their memories with the Friends of the Hornor's Crossing Public Library, who will be collecting written testimonials for a commemorative publication.
"Whoever and wherever we are, we are not alone." — Felix Kipp

Wren Masterson had some rules about funerals. Firstly, the most important question was whether the deceased would have wanted you there. It's a celebration of their life, after all, and you should respect their wishes, even/especially when they're gone.
Felix Kipp probably would have appreciated the sentiment of going to his funeral, but he definitely would have pointed out that it was a bad idea, "tactically speaking". Over the years, Kipp had assimilated a vast range of human experience, both real and fictive; he'd learned many lessons from Christie and Doyle, Hammett and Higgins, Ludlum and le Carré… a seemingly endless list of greats. (He also read a lot of harlequin romances, but those weren't really as 'reference', per se. Also Chuck Tingle, who he thought was hilarious.) Were Felix here today, he'd say that if Wren were scared of getting caught (which they were), and the opposition was in the area (also yes), then going to a mentor's visitation or funeral would be a profoundly bad idea. "That," he would say, with the confidence of someone who had never, ever shaken a tail in his life, "is how you get made."
Bless that old man, he'd had no idea what he was talking about. Things were so much more complicated on the road. Yet Felix Kipp had been right anyway, because he read… a lot of books. Like Condor, except a gay librarian. Wren had always been amazed at his speed: Felix could whip through just about anything in a matter of hours, yet he retained so much of it without apparent effort. Masterson wasn't wired for that. They had a massive book collection of their own, of course, but they read embarrassingly little of it, and it took a while for the content to sink in compared to video. Kipp had never judged them for this. "Different people learn differently," he would say, with a smile and a shrug.
"Different." Understatement of the decade.
Second question: would attending the funeral add anything to the community's process of healing? Answer: fuck no. What the hell was the dumpy, beat-up stoner burnout going to do to help this town? Magic tricks? These were small families and old people and Masterson had never known any of them. First, that had been the point. Then… then it had been for everyone's safety. They would mourn amongst themselves and they would be better for it. Felix Arthur Kipp was dead, but Wren Masterson was alive, and they weren't going to endanger his community by paying homage to a headstone, a lump of carbon, an ex-human being.
Last question: would attending actually help you heal? Final answer: no. Unlike that poor, sweet old man, Wren Masterson never believed that there was anything after death.
Now, steakshift doesn't dump on religious types (except the real assholes); they respect that faith takes effort and practice, and they suspect said faith gives them… something, in the end. Contentment, hopefully, before an endless sleep. If they're lucky, maybe even something deep and vivid. But Wren knows that is not for them, because they've been there before, and while they don't remember exact details, they're certain that it fucking sucked.
The truth was that steakshift had been dealing with derealization, nihilistic depression and suicidality since long before they even contemplated being "Wren Masterson". It started when they were a preteen, and then life got even harder, and in 2008… the artist formerly known as Anna Bojarski went to Hornor's Crossing to stage an art exhibition. The Five, the ones who looked… Toni, Stich, Brock, Devon… Clem… their deaths had been a horrible accident, but when Anna realized the magnitude of their crime, they had decided to end it, too. They got their glimpse behind the curtain, and it was exactly what they expected:
Nothing.
The Nothing spat them back out.
Felix Kipp had found them, and he had nursed them back to health. He helped raise a new human being from the shattered wreck of Anna Bojarski, and he had kept it secret, because it had to be secret. Eventually, Mx. Wren Masterson emerged from the maelstrom… still absolutely certain they were/are dead/imaginary, on some level, but better at coping with it. At least on average.
They did not go to the funeral. They couldn't risk being spotted in the area, not when they'd gone to such lengths to keep their connection to Unwinding a secret. Instead, when Penelope signaled that the coast was clear, Wren went to Felix's house and stood in a den that was no longer familiar. Everything that should have been there was there but it looked too normal. Like a snapshot. Or a rendering. "Ce n'est pas la bibliothèque de votre ami."2 Some of those surrealists3 had it right.
The cross-stitch above the TV looked the same, too… at least, mostly? It was still a simple picture of an old pump, masonry and a book, with a line of text in a firm and friendly serif:

"A town without a library is like a town without a well."

It was the same, but it was wrong, because everything was wrong. The librarian was dead. The wellspring had run dry.
Supposedly, Felix had tripped on the carpet and cracked his neck on the head of the couch. This was… plausible. There was no sign of foul play. There was nothing in the house. Nothing suspicious. Nothing amiss. No precious artifacts were missing or damaged or different. They couldn't find any juice in the place — Penelope said something about 'Humes', but janitor talk didn't resonate with Wren. Just a simple slip-and-fall accident. One mistake. All it takes. They had no logical reason to doubt it, but Masterson doubted anyway, because their life was not ruled by logic: it was ruled by narrative inconvenience.
In their experience, plus the infinite wisdom passed down by their mentor… nobody just wakes up, 1) in an unfamiliar room, 2) adjacent to a place they dread, and 3) discovers that their oldest friend is dead. That is not an accident. If you insist that it's an accident, Ian Fleming might like a word with you.4 Synchronicity does not exist! …except when it does. Such things actually happen around Wren Masterson an awful lot, but not like this. They tend to be messier.
"Where's the dog?"
"What?"
"Where," Penelope Gore repeated, standing over a blue plastic dish, "is the dog?"
This was a good question. Felix's dog had gone blind a long time ago and while he was not completely helpless, he generally stayed close by, in familiar and navigable surroundings. Yet Ben, the yellow Lab, was nowhere to be found.
"I don't know," steakshift replied, tonelessly. "I hope he's okay. But he's probably not. Not the way this week is going."
"Don't say that, Wren. You're trapped in a pattern of negative thinking."
"Oh, I'm trapped in a lot of patterns right now. Believe me." Wren had not stayed in the Cardinal Motel. That would be silly. They had retreated into an old bolthole and retrieved clothes from a long-forgotten supply cache. Flannel. Plaid. It did not look terrible but still felt like a cage. Their binder was clean though, so that helped a little.
"I believe you. You know how misery loves company? Well, you're very influential." Penelope waved her funny box at the surrounding area, then pointed it at Wren's torso. It made an angry noise. "You're like a black hole right now," she observed. "Your Hume count is very high compared to the environment. I'm concerned that you might just… suck the rest of the narrative in with you." Gore paused. "Not that I want to think about that."
"Am I known to do that, Penelope? By accident?"
She hesitated. "…no. Typically, you either do things on purpose and there's a ripple effect, or you just…"
"Don't," Wren murmured. "I just don't."
"Let's not go down this road, steakshift."
"You're right, that's not happening, not today. I'm just… wallowing. I'll get past it. Buried family before. Never easy. But this isn't just difficult, it's… contrived. When I talked to him on Saturday, I knew it was possible we'd never meet again, because coming back here would be beyond dumb, and yet here I am! Very abruptly!"
Penelope looked around helplessly. "Local reality is stable, Masterson. This is a normal place, a normal death. It's sad, super sad, but random. Like you say, it happens sometimes."
"Not like this. Remember what I said earlier about Tarantino? He's a creepy asshole, but for the most part, those jumbled scenes do eventually add up. 3+2 still equals 5. But here…" They pointed at the couch. "Something is missing on the way to five. I haven't got the whole picture. That's not unusual! Not unto itself! If I saw everything that ever happened I'd be driven completely fucking insane!"
"Worse than you are now."
"Yeah! Way worse!" They paused, then glanced at Penelope, slightly hurt. "Please don't joke about my brain problems, whistl. Only I can do that."
"Alright. Fair." Penelope's mind finally caught up to Wren's meanderings. Tarantino + Ezekiel = 'Pulp Fiction'. But… how could they know that was in the letter? "Were you going somewhere with that rant?"
"God I hope so. I can't tell. Spinning in circles. Missing a clue. Because it is a mystery, and like Auster said, there's nothing that's not significant. Or close enough."
Penelope felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. Fuck. This is it, isn't it? If Masterson's outlook was even close to accurate (God help us all), this sort of circuitous logic was a big part of why she wrote the message to herself in the first place. Was she really trying to cheat the cycle, or was she helping fill the gap? Would the letter actually make things worse? Or was this just what was needed to keep things moving?
"This is a hazy shade of winter," she said aloud.
Masterson froze. "I'm sorry. What? What was that?"
"It's The Bangles."
"But… why?"
Gore laughed involuntarily. Nervous. "What, you're the only one who does references? It just came to me. It's, uh." She screwed her eyes shut and sung a few bars off-key. "'Funny how my memory skips, while looking over manuscripts, of unpublished rhyme'."
"Why is that on your mind?"
Penelope paused. She sighed.
She gave Wren the letter.

Pen,
This will be a very strange and difficult day. I would say sorry, but I'm sure Masterson will be making their VERY SPECIFIC APOLOGIES in all due time, so I'll cut to the chase instead.
Something happened. Something real bad. We missed a detail somewhere: there was a crack in the seal and ██ people fell through it. The way they explain these things (or don't) Wren has a solution. They swear up and down that they're not changing what's already been done (which is supposedly everything? They quoted True Detective. So fucking tiring) but the more people know (including you!), the harder it is to rearrange. Meaning that even before taking these Class As, we don't know shit! They talked a lot but didn't tell us. Typical!
Except this is different. Aside from the aforementioned crack in containment, what we DO know is that this is retribution. Masterson had a friend here in town, someone "normal". Before they stormed out, all Ezekiel 25:175… Wren was pretty certain their friend had been murdered.
It's been 8 hours. They haven't come back. Pretty sure they were right.
steakshift was furious in a way I've never seen. Got no idea what they'll do, what they can do, under these circumstances. I bet it's going to be messy, and there will be blowback, because that's how it always works. BUT:
(and I swear I am not under duress in any way)
I trust them.
The "quid pro quo" they talk about isn't just a mutual aid thing. I think that's how they perceive the universe, the "narrative construct". Like karma, but… more direct? It's weird, possibly inexplicable, but they respect it above all else, and before they left, they swore up and down that they weren't tipping the balance. They were making sure people "didn't die like this". They called it "self-contained" and said "only the guilty will be hurt, including me".
Wren Masterson is trying to redirect some of the pain in the world. They think it's merciful, somehow. Maybe they're right. But from my (limited) experience, it's going to suck when they pop out the other side, and even if they think they can shoulder that burden… they don't have to. Not alone.
You remember Rebecca? It's like that. Never hesitate.
Love you, Pen. Try your best.

Wren read it. Then they said, "This explains a lot."
They sat down on Felix's couch, and they read the letter again. A few times. Then they set it down and put their head in their hands. They began to cry, softly. Relieved. "I thought I was losing it. Looking too hard. Oh, God. Felix, you poor guy, what did they do to you."
Penelope sat down next to them. "So… should I ask? You didn't tell me about him beforehand, and I know you're an… extremely private person."
"No, this is… I think it's gonna be okay. This is painful but doable. This is… normal. For him. Somehow." Wren laughed hollowly. Then they put a hand over their mouth. The next peal of laughter was earnest. "Holy shit. I did it. He died a normal death."
"What?"
"Look around us, Penelope! You said it yourself! Normal place! I'm the weirdest thing in the building! But I was here! I saw something… and it must have been bad, because I fixed it, I fixed the living shit out of it. Clearly, whatever it was, no one knows, except for us."
"But even we don't know what it was. I mean…" Penelope smacked the paper, dismayed. "This is it, Wren! This is all we have to go on. This and your… scarification thing."
"Oh, this isn't gonna last. Although… I think I'm gonna get '23' as a tattoo, once it heals. To remind myself."
"Of what?! You said the number 23 was meaningless!"
"It is. All things are, on some level."
Penelope pinched the bridge of her nose. "Please, not again. I am begging you."
"No, no, this isn't narrative engineering, this is a regular ol' human thing. The number 23, it's a joke about confirmation bias. I can't remember the details offhand, but there were some bad disasters, and the number 23 kept popping up. Or 2+3, or other functions and derivatives, more and more elaborate. Numerology. You can reduce every detail to 23 somehow."
The Foundation operative cracked a cautious smile. "Like.. reducing everything to 42?"
"Yeah! It's all bullshit in the end! Because the numbers don't mean anything. It's… it's us. We're decently-advanced monkeys who like patterns. On some level it's no more than that. Everyone goes eventually. It's what we do with the burden that matters. The knowledge that something was… lost." Wren sniffled and wiped their eyes. "I'm gonna miss him a lot."
"I can tell. What was he to you?"
"Oh, jeez. Uh… surrogate dad. Cool gay uncle. Head librarian. Holmes to my Watson."
"Master to your Padawan?"
"No. He wasn't an alien, or a Jedi, he was… brilliant, rad as hell, but normal. Felix Kipp had a completely normal life of utterly average adventure. Then he met me, and… well, he saved me. He didn't have to, but he did. He taught me so much. I owe him everything." Wren bit back another sob. "I gave him peace. I actually did something right. I gave him peace."
Penelope frowned. Something tugged at her mind, something dark and heavy. "But… who killed Felix Kipp, before you… tampered with the narrative to end up here?"
Masterson's grief pinwheeled into manic glee. "Who fucking cares? Clearly I beat the dude, or I wouldn't be here now. I wouldn't have woken up alive in your bathtub. I won! Hahahaha. Oh, wow. That's hardcore." steakshift snapped their fingers. "Pakoosh! Eat it, Rorschach!"
"Wait… you committed murder yesterday?! Revenge-murder?"
"The perfect murder, at that. We don't remember it because it was never real. Rendered standalone, disconnected, and retconned without a trace."
"What the actual fuck! How am I supposed to be okay with that?!"
"Well, how was I going to be okay with you, like… jamming Darth Vader in one of your boxes? Dude needed to go. So he went. Thoroughly."
"You said Felix wasn't a Jedi."
"No, he was the gay uncle: the crispy guy." Wren caught themselves and winced. "Oh, too soon, me. Speedrunning the five stages of grief. Off-topic. No, this is good. This is fine! We will never have to worry about this, ever again." Masterson seized the letter and fished around in their pocket for a lighter.
"I'm not sure I'm comfortable helping you cover up a… locked-room… non-murder mystery."
"Strictly speaking," Masterson said, setting the paper on fire, "you already did."
"Oh, fuck off, steakshift. I'm gonna forget you said that."
"That's the spirit."

holes

hole.

fake
real
submit
resist
consult
numbers
0 1 2 3 █ 5 █ 7 ██ 10 ████████ 17 ██ 23
gaps

"cracks"

barrier

"went wrong"

failure

"██ people"

██ ?
2 murder
3 suicide
5 manslaughter
17 prey
23 dead

"Something happened. Something real bad."

"bad"?
undefined

"having that sort of"

power

"that's never been cool."

never
"cool"?
fake
never
real
we are
real
███l
cool
are we

"ARE WE COOL YET, ANNA?"

Penelope Gore and Wren Masterson went to the nearest major intersection, which — given the size of Hornor's Crossing — still wasn't very big. All those spy stories, historical anecdotes and mysteries distilled to their essence, curated and passed on by Felix Kipp… they demanded that Wren have multiple exits. Silly old man. Too wise to be paranoid. Too right to be completely wrong. Tradecraft. Learn it, however you can, or die trying. Either/or.
"So what's next for you?" steakshift asked, putting on their helmet. They checked their bicycle headlamp. Broken. Fuck. How'd that happen?
"Back to, uh… Redactedland. Don't ask."
"Alright. Still feeling bad about the whole bathtub thing, so I'll respect your privacy if you respect mine."
Gore smiled. "Quid pro quo, right?"
Masterson beamed. "Hell fucking yeah, Pen, you are finally getting it." Their smile faltered. "It's… not just leniency, though. It's reliability. You've helped with a lot of my bullshit, and I will make myself available, if you need me. Like if you ever want to talk about your friend."
"My friend?"
"The one in the letter. Rebecca."
Her face fell. "I'm… not comfortable with that. I hope you understand."
"I do. In fact, I understand privacy and discretion better than… well, almost anybody. There was one guy, but he's gone now." steakshift straddled their bicycle. They'd have to replace the headlamp soon. "I'll see ya 'round, whistl."
The operative known as "whistl_stahp" nodded somberly. She put the key in the ignition, but hesitated. She looked back at the hacker and called out, "What happened to the dog?"
"Who knows? It's a small town. Ben might turn up, one way or another."
"Alright…" Gore bit her lip. "One more thing."
"Christ. Okay, Columbo."
"Why did you react like that, when I mentioned The Bangles?"
"Oh, I thought you meant Simon and Garfunkel."
"…and?"
"And… nothing, in particular, I just like music. That, and… during, uh, the bad times, with the 'collective'… some of us had a gimmick. Jojo."
Penelope squinted at Wren, three meters away on their bicycle. "As in… 'Get Back'?"
They laughed. "Kinda! But no. 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure'. It's like a superhero thing, except all the powers — 'Stands' — are named after songs. Sort of an in-joke."
"That's… pretty silly."
"Oh, I thought so too. Then I actually read the comic, the whole thing. Absolutely killer. Mastery of creative form. Gave it a lot more thought afterward and now I know what my Stand is." They hesitated. "Forget I said that. It's rude to, uh… flaunt such knowledge."
Gore laughed despite herself. "Okay… so it's not 'A Hazy Shade of Winter'?"
"Nah, nobody has that Stand, IIRC. Nobody in the series. Nobody in the collective. Maybe somebody has a fan Stand online. Who knows." Mx. Masterson shrugged. "Who cares? Never really mattered, anyway."
Then they biked off into the night.
2008/04/05
It took almost two hours to get the woman inside, cleaned up, clothed and fed. He wrapped her in a blanket, parked her on the couch and gave her a bowl of soup, which she didn't eat. Instead she stared at the clock. Or stared through it. Either way, she stared intently, as though she feared time itself would grind to a halt the instant she looked away.
Felix called in sick.
There was something… profoundly wrong with her, but he couldn't pin it down to a single source. Kipp was very distantly reminded of a library patron who had suffered a stroke the previous year. In the process of healing, that man had been forced to relearn many old habits that once came naturally. This girl was moving a little like that. Slow. Careful. Uncertain of herself in her own body, not confident in her presence or perception. It looked… painful. If not physically, then mentally.
It took ages to get her talking. He had to be very specific. When he asked, "Who are you?" she replied, "I/me/us." Then she looked stricken. Then she started to cry.
The response to "What is your name?" wasn't much better. At first, she said her name was Anna Bojarski, but then… "I/we aren't real. Anna killed herself. I/we/us were/are dead. " She started to rock back and forth. "She died. Died, like… like Clem, like… T-Toni, Stich… Brock. Devon." The woman shuddered violently. "All gone."
Felix Kipp knelt down, took both her hands and made eye contact. "Anna… you are alive. You've clearly been through a lot, but you are absolutely alive, and you are going to be okay."
The woman started sobbing again and shook her head violently. "No!" she wailed. "Anna died, I/we can't be her, but… what…" She looked down at herself, dismayed. "Who else could I/we be?"
"Is… is there anyone who can help you? Anyone I can call?"
"No! No! Old friends would kill me/us. The others would hurt you and take Anna and make you forget and then she/I/we will be gone, erased forever, please, please, don't call anyone, the others, they'll just make it worse. Anna… I/we made things… worse. Anna did this. I… did this. It's my fault." She stared at him, eyes wide, bloodshot and frightened beyond belief. "This is all my fault."

wider

wider

light
life
laughter
joy
fake
real
pain
misery
suffering
dead
dark
point
undefined
point
undefined
POINT
UNDEFINED ?
UN███IN█D
██WIN██G█
UN███IN█D
UN█IND███
UNWINDING

UNWINDING.
23 DEAD 2.
20 WEAK 3.
5 GONE 3.
3 HEAD 2.
2 KILL 1.
1 LIFE 0.

0.
0.
0 0 0.
0 1 0
0 1 1
1 1 2
1 2 3
beat

"beep"

push

"buttons, because of course, that was the"

point

"me and"

killer

"Agent Smith"

hero

"Daffy Duck"

victim

"motherfucker"

"████████ ████, the ████████."

"This is why you exist."

"you"
undefined
"why"
undefined
UNDEFINED
UN███IN█D
UNWINDING
██WIN██G█
wing
bird
█ing
king
bird
wren
WREN.

"this is"

WREN.

"entire reason"

WREN.

WREN MASTERSON.

"Anna Bojarski, the Developer."

"sadistic bitch"

victim

"so predictable"

villain

"conceivably inflicted"

killer

"my family"

1 KILL

3 KILL

17 KILL

"aiming at"

23 KILL

WREN MASTERSON.

"or was it"

coincidence
true
random
false
pattern
form

"joke"

"joke"?

"no more"

"JOKE"?

2019/07/27
Sorry, but no. Penelope Gore was not content to call this (non-)case closed. Instead of going back to Redactedland, she returned to the (non-)scene of the (non-)crime.
She wasn't sure where Masterson had gone, but she had a hunch she knew where they weren't: Felix Kipp's house. Having "solved" this thing, Wren was unlikely to return anytime soon. But Penelope hadn't solved it. She didn't know what she could possibly put in her report, if she filed one at all. She couldn't even see the murder(s).
What was this? What was she even doing? She wasn't a Field Agent. Penelope Gore had just sort of… stepped in a mess. She kept telling herself that she was trying to worm into GoI-5869's inner circle, introduce an element of control, turn an asset. Perhaps one day, "whistl_stahp" would obtain critical intelligence. Maybe even a line on Jude Kriyot and other high-value PoIs! This argument wasn't altogether convincing, in part because she was not merely getting played.
As of eight weeks ago, Penelope Gore is not a mole. She is a double agent. She is lying to the Foundation and helping PoI-6966 bury their connection to a Euclid-class anomaly. One with a body count.
"It sounds… so, so bad when I put it that way," Gore muttered to herself. But no, it would sound bad any way she wrangled it. That's why there would probably be no report. This was off-the-books, secret, but ultimately professional — like a therapist talking to a crazy person. Like Rebecca. She froze, and shook her head. No. Not like Rebecca. Never again. Never hesitate, not when you can do the right thing.
Which was why she was here, in Hornor's Crossing, assisting with SCP-4784. It was still very early in the containment process. Penelope Gore was involved because the initial lead had been in a photo album, surrendered by PoI-6966 as a gesture of goodwill to the big scary janitors; thanks to CLOWNFISH, any files even tangentially related to steakshift would become part of her caseload, if only in an advisory capacity.
Except… Wren Masterson had made the tip as a feint. It was a truth, buried in a lie, wrapped up in another layer of partial truth. They'd compared it to le Carré, but ultimately it had been Penelope's idea, and she didn't watch those kinds of movies. She had been thinking back to her teenage years: specifically, a period of profoundly stressful Livejournal drama and deceit. In an instant, Gore's mind leapt from a memory of young Pen at a keyboard to a vision of herself in a D-class uniform. She fought to banish it. No, this was not a betrayal, this was an arrangement. She was cultivating a source! Building trust. Well… no, not exactly. This was an alignment of circumstances. Wren Masterson was trying to clean up after themselves. Or at least, a former self.
The Foundation had absolutely needed to know about Anna and her magnum opus, because it was like an unexploded bomb waiting to go off. If the files Masterson had handed over were accurate (and Penelope Gore had read everything, every horrible detail), Unwinding was the oeuvre of a traumatized, scared girl who had hated herself with an incredible intensity, resented her existence, and wanted to go. She had sublimated that desire into her project, which was grotesque: manslaughter and suicide spelled out in correspondence and diagrams. Soon there would be a SCiPNet entry, and it would be filed away, neat and tidy, in a self-contained file. "Anna Bojarski (AKA 'The Developer') was a casualty of her own prototype at a closed exhibition facilitated by AWCY."
Only if the Foundation found out, they wouldn't see it that way at all. "Bojarski" wouldn't be a signature in an album, an alias, or a footnote. It would be the name atop MxMasters' rapsheet, along with the words, "art terrorist and fugitive".
Penelope Gore was conflicted. On one hand, Wren Masterson was a reality bender ("genre-savvy", my ass), and they were way too low on the threat index. Forget obnoxious mixtapes or bringing memes to life, this was a… an existential assassination. Christ.
That second tape, though.

"As much as I want to own my sins, make things right, I can't help anyone from inside a white box. If you'd nabbed me when I was younger, I would have given up and died in your gulag, but now… I have commitments. I have people who depend on me, and… I need to make sure they don't make the same mistakes Anna did. They need my help. You know this. In your heart, you know this."

Penelope Gore knew a thing or two about living with mistakes. She knew how hard it was for people to change, but Penelope wanted to believe it was possible, because… well, she'd done it herself. She had learned, after Rebecca… went. Penelope refused to be a bystander and she wasn't going to let anyone else down, certainly not somebody trying to do right, and steakshift was not the same person who had built Unwinding. This wasn't an act or a deception. Anna Bojarski was dead. Mx. Wren Masterson was damaged, eccentric and unpredictable, but they genuinely cared about what they were doing! They was clearly trying to be better, they were just… screwed up. Like everyone, only more so.
At the same time… Masterson's outlook wasn't "just" depressing. It was ontologically terrifying. Penelope Gore did not want to indulge the paranoid interpretation that everything in the universe was just… narrative faffery. There was a vast body of historical, philosophical and scientific evidence that suggested otherwise, and the fact that steakshift saw the world though a warped lens didn't mean it was real… unless they were exerting in/direct influence on the situation, in which case it was way too real.
In this case… they were/had, and it was/is.
Alright, fuck it. Let's get wacky.
If she were a character, a sort of Scully-type, hard-nosed-but-good-hearted investigator (which she is NOT, as much as she appreciates Gillian Anderson), would she be satisfied? Heck no! She was still in the dark. Masterson claimed this situation was under control. They'd also said that their "ARA" measure was under control, and that was way before the clusterfuck at the diner. Now they were saying that this was "self-contained"? Two (non-)murders, a completely done deal, no loose ends? Fat chance! Penelope Gore had made a lot of mistakes but she was still a Foundation Researcher, goddamnit, and she was going to do her job. This was an anomaly. A known unknown.
Penelope started on the porch, swept down to the root cellar (jars, water heater, furnace), through the dining area, then up into the attic. She found nothing with the Kant counter, but then, she wasn't really expecting to — Foundation forensics had already been through this place, and hadn't found anything out of the ordinary. Luckily, she wasn't just looking for anomalies — she was looking for signs of habitation, hints of character. If the person now known as "Wren Masterson" had started rebuilding themselves here, with Felix Kipp's encouragement, whatever personal touches she found could be a window into steakshift's tightly-guarded personal history. Maybe even a bargaining chip.
Eventually, Penelope Gore found a mundane clue in the attic. There was a set of neatly labelled file boxes, arranged in chronological order. The acronym on the side seemed familiar but she couldn't place it. She opened one of the boxes. Videotapes. Lots of them. Envelopes, too. Old paper, old handwriting. Love letters? Playful like that, but chaste… oh, except for that one, wow. "Whoops," she murmured. "Sorry, Mr. Kipp." Not my business, she started to say, then paused. Most of these letters were unsigned, or just initialed, but the more serious correspondence had an extended signature. "Your Mistie. Keep circulating the tapes."
Penelope had seen that phrase before, in Room 5 of the Cardinal Motel, when Masterson leaned in to ask about borrowing a shirt. It was tattooed on their upper left chest, above the heart, written in the silhouette of an ouroboros. "KEEP CIRCULATING THE TAPES." What did this mean? One way to find out. There was plenty of room in the trunk.
The rest of the house was clean… with two exceptions. The first, in one of the upstairs bedrooms (otherwise derelict) was a rather sinister painting. It was a depiction of a winter hunt, except one man had turned a shotgun on his partner, leaving them dead in a heap of wood. Wow, bleak. Penelope shined her flashlight at the plaque on the bottom and frowned, perplexed.

███████A█E█O███I██E█

…just vowels? "John Madden, John Madden," Gore murmured, and giggled despite herself. The Kant counter emitted one solitary buzz. This was… weird? Maybe? Penelope squinted at it some more, then realized what she was doing. Nope! Nope nope. Investigate this one later. In daylight. Possibly with SCRAMBLE gear. She turned on her heel, walked out of the room, and wandered back downstairs, where she found something else in the den.
This artifact was very conspicuous, but she didn't feel bad about missing it earlier, because it hadn't been visible. Now it beamed like a night-light. It was a joke, the kind shared between friends in a safe space. Gore read the message aloud and laughed as it twinkled. Adorable. Wren would definitely want that someday, so Penelope took it. Secured, confiscated… "pinched".
She looked around some more. She didn't find the dog. Afterward, Penelope Gore spent a few more days in Hornor's Crossing, then went back to Redactedland. She forgot all about the painting, because it wasn't there in the first place.

joke

RAGE

scatter
focus
anger
light
laser
██s█r
█r█s█
prism
light
prism
mirror
prism
painting
prism
screen

"████████"

wall
sink
dark
light
bounce
screen

"████S█A█"

?

"████S█A█ ██ TIL██████"

???
broken
symbol
fragment
shard
weapon
tool
knife
operate

"SA████ ██████ TIL████"
"SAMUEL ██████ TILFORD"

SAMUEL TILFORD + ██████ ?
SAMUEL TILFORD = victim .

"How?"

23

"non-reference"

scatter

"back"

knife

"Rather than"

shard

"imagine a"

shotgun

"pellets"

23

"fake"

true

"joke"

false

"real"

false

"death"

true
load

"derivatives"

23 17 10 7 5 3 2 0

"functions"

gun

"camera"

shot

click

BANG

beep
beat
scatter

"proper fucking mess"

push

"Tilford's Folly"

pull

"Anna Bojarski, the Developer"

to

"████████ ████, the ████████"

push
pull
push
pull
black
white
void
light
prism

"this"

painting
screen
mirror
retina
mind
eye

███████A█E█O███I██E█

"vowels?"

?

"John Madden, John Madden."

??

"hee hee hee"

???

███████A█E█O███I██E█
████████████████████
H█ZY SH█D█ █F W█NT█R

"this is a"
"HAZY SHADE OF WINTER"

HAZY SHADE OF WINTER
H█ZY SH█D█ █F WINT█R
H█ZY SH███ ██ █INT██
H█Z█ S████ IT M██I██
H█Z█ I██ SMIT█ █████

"must be"

H█Z█ I █ █ S█ █ █ █ █

"won't you"

"enemy"

H██I█ S█ █

"stop and"

"S████"

"remember"

HIS█
his
he
he
he
I
he

"me?"

me.
I.
I am.
I think
I will

"simply pretend"

I will be

"capable of being"

the guy.

(Get it?)

2008/04/05
Felix knew first aid. Had to, given the number of dumb kids and fragile seniors who went through the library in the Crossing. This girl's injuries were superficial. She didn't seem to be in physical pain. He didn't know psychology or therapy or anything like that, but he did know people, and this woman was genuinely scared for her life, all in the midst of the absolute worst freakout he had ever, ever seen… and he'd fucked around with LSD back in the day.
She believed what she was saying. Every word.
Felix Arthur Kipp paced in his kitchen. He couldn't call the police. He was a gay man in his fifties out in the conservative backwoods and he knew better than to hand a traumatized girl over to the cops. He couldn't call the hospital, either, because then she would be institutionalized against her will; God only knows whether they'd let her out at all, and that was assuming these former "friends" weren't going to hunt her down, like she feared. And the "others". Who were the "others" who frightened her so badly, the ones she claimed could erase her completely?
"What… is this?"
It was the first thing she had said without being prompted. Felix swiveled around and found Anna standing in front of the television, holding a VHS tape with faded handmade labels. The text along the spine read, "MST3K EPS 420/421".
Felix blinked. "That's… Mystery Science Theater 3000."
"What is… Mystery Science…?"
"It's a TV show. From, ah, Minnesota. I had a partner from down there, and when he moved back, we stayed in touch. He sent me some of these. Lots, actually. Funny stuff, but… niche."
"Can… I… watch this?" she whispered. She had stopped crying. She looked… hopeful?
"Yeah. Yeah, of course." Felix Kipp hesitated, then smiled. "In fact, I'll watch it with you."
So they sat down on the couch, and they watched it.
Eventually, Ben hopped up on the couch with them.

Footnotes
1. PoI-6966 (AKA "steakshift", "MxMasters" or "mxm"), member of GoI-5869 ("Gamers Against Weed").
2. "This is not your friend's library."
3. René Magritte, "The Treachery of Images", 1929.
4. "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." (Ian Fleming, Goldfinger, 1959)
5. "And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them." (Ezekiel 25:17, King James Version)


So, I've been thinking about death a lot.
It's always kicked around in the back of my mind. Like, all living things are doomed to die. I'll die. Probably not anytime soon, but hey. Now I'm not a psychiatrist, so this is gonna sound mostly shitty, but I want you to listen to me when I say dying sucks ass.
As a person who went through this bullshit four hundred twenty seven times, I know that getting your soul ripped out your body is actual horseshit and so are its causes. Fatal wounds, your stomach boiling with poison, your heart stopping yadda yadda methods of suicide aplenty all eat ass and not in the good way. But more importantly, for you to consider committing suicide in the first place, even if you're only thinking of it in passing means that deep down there is at the very least an inkling that whatever you're doing right now, whatever project that you might be working on, whatever goal you're trying to achieve simply isn't worth living for anymore. In fact, it in itself might be the reason why you're considering it, so you may be freed from whatever task or responsibility or burden, expectation, ambition, the list can go on for eons and I could rattle off the ones I personally experience, but we're not close enough for that yet. I hope you don't mind me being uncomfortable telling my life story here.
What I am willing to tell you, though, is that I've always wanted to die, and have died, a fuckton more times than any living thing probably should, but I'm somehow still here. Cursed be my fate, somehow I also remember every last body I lived, and, sure I don't have their personal memories, but I still have to live their lives for a small bit most of the time, and let me tell you, I've seen what shit fate can throw at someone. As the closest example, when I get bodies of Foundation employees, sometimes I still had to hold their job for whatever brief time until a replacement was put in. The horrors I've seen in how these people are treated when they think I'm their regular old punching bag are mind blowing. Then they shrivel up when they see this little doohickey dangled around my neck as if I'm any more human than that person used to be. It's disgusting and I hate it so much when people immediately become lap dogs in front of Site Director Bright but not Researcher Jeffrey Carter, who they must know better than some shady dude that holes up in his office all day. I looked into his records. Perfect attendance, does his job okay, the model form of a corporate office worker. Poor bastard was one of the few that actually did… this… on purpose.
That one time, I got the body of a D-Class and was in the middle of changing out of the orange jumpsuit when Doctor Mike Goodwyn grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around to face him, then yelled at me for worrying him so much over the years, referring to me as Devil Jevil and talking about how much he missed me with a tone both frustrated and relieved, laughing at the memory of a shitty tattoo on my arm that I didn't even notice, asking what the fuck I did to get myself on death row… and then I raised the amulet. I've never seen anyone deflate so quickly.
There was also this soon-to-be senior staff who worked for 30 years with 8 of them in field duty. Her name was Sitara and— wow God, sorry I'm getting emotional— Sitara. She served multiple sites in Asia, which, if you don't know, which I doubt, is a fucking bigass continent with upwards of seven hundred facilities. She'd been the brightest mind I've seen back then, and I was excited to finally give her her shiny new black key card in the Site 40 Seminar Room in front of about three hundred staff that all looked up to her. The whole incident was absolutely stupid, probably the only stupid thing she's ever done. She wore her nicer heels that she didn't bring out often, and of course, she wasn't used to walking in them. Tripped over a God damn tile gap and crashed into me. The moment I opened my eyes as her, I screamed. I've never willingly went to any of her old sites since. Not like they'd welcome the killer of their top scientist anyway.
Aside from, or rather, just like these examples, we all have some sort of unique value that makes us us. Every single one of these bodies? People. Every person that interacted with them? People. Every friend or acquaintance or a polite hello in the lobby every morning that suddenly stopped one day, leaving a person feel not-sad but definitely weird? These are all people. Nothing replaces a human soul, and nothing here can create one, either. They're custom made and made for you. I know, it's in tune with popular Fake Deep philosophical bullshit, but having seen how life is for so many people, I swear by it. But you don't have that kind of time, so aside from learning by experience, you can always pick a God and pray, and really, that's the closest you're gonna get to answering how we happened in the first place, because fuck if I know what's with the life and death system we have.
The only definite constant I can say is that the moment you get ripped out of this flesh cage, God or not, you face whatever you've done with your life and see what hell you've wrought upon this earth. I am no different than Carter or Jevil or Sitara were, in terms of personhood. Whenever I die, though I feel nothing, I remember everything I did and everything that it caused. It always happens every time, and although I'm probably a special case on death bullshit, I can totally buy that memories playback when you're about to cark it. You're mostly gonna remember the bad times that led you to this point, ending your life on a sad note. You don't wanna be trapped in the void with your sad baggage as your eternal playlist, trust me. I barely lasted three days suspended in the amulet before edging madness because holy shit, have I made some fucking mistakes.
Ugh… I just. I'm sorry that this turned into a vent. I keep preaching my own beliefs and projecting my shit and repeating every little message in this rant but I want to be absolutely sure I get the point across that my condition has allowed me to look at a lot of lives these past hundred years so you'd trust me to say that killing yourself is not great. Dying is a fucking bitch, to both yourself and the people who care. Shit hurts. You might be some edgy scenecore emo whateveryoucallitthesedays and shit saying things like, fuck, I'm not important and nobody cares about me. Wrong, bucko. You could kill a thousand men and have some nameless grave in the middle of nowhere but the moment a person with empathy passes by and prays for you or even just wonder what kind of living being is buried there, that shit? It's a person who cares. I care. Someone out there will.
I have to be at another site in about an hour, so I'll wrap it up here with me being level with you. I'm gonna be honest, things are rough. Working here is hell. Maybe you'll see actual hell at one point on the job, God knows. I know this is like, really rich, coming from a Site Director with a cushy position, but a seat up here really did come with its tolls.
Please remember that life extends way beyond what you work on, even if you feel less shitty when you're productive, burnout and anxiety of not being enough will bite you in the ass and refuse to let go. Look around and take a day or two off, talk to your colleagues about miscellaneous off-work shit, pick up a hobby. Find something that makes you happy that has nothing to do with the pressure of contributing work. And if down the line you ever need motivation to keep going, remember this talk of how you will always have value and how shitty dying is. My contact information is in the staff list if you need another dose of my existential rambling, okay? I'm always here for you.
Literally.


I saw a dead guy once.
He was sprawled on the street, guts hanging, tongue lolling out, eyes starting at nothing. His hands were already stiff when I found him, maggots were already feasting on his flesh. He was the first corpse that I had ever seen, and he was already starting to rot by the time I found him.
I was fifteen when I ate him.
I didn't want to, I never wanted to. But when my hunger comes by, I don't decide if I would eat or not. All that exists is the cold flesh in my hands, the gnawing at my belly, the slow emergence of my fangs, the need to consume whatever I had in front of me. Ever since that night I've only eaten twenty times in the last thirty years, Doctor - Yet I don't feel worse about any of it.
One time there was a girl at school - beautiful, radiant like the sun, with blue eyes that you could stare into for hours. I met her at a party, though I'd been looking at her for a long time before that. She always had a smile ready, as if the entire world was a game to her. I loved her for that, still do. She was the only girl I'd ever loved. Her name was Sam. Samantha. And she was the only one out there who was just like me.
She never told me that she was. People like us never really want to tell. I would pretend to sleep every time she went out at night, her fangs extended just beneath her chin. She never brought it up with me when she came back in the early morning, smelling of blood and death. It only got worse during those last few months, when she would leave the house with a knife in her hand and she would come home, tired, her clothes covered in blood, her eyes just a bit wilder as the tiniest trace of her fangs retracted behind her lips. I only knew why later. When she told me she was pregnant, I kept my fears secret. I prayed that it was only a coincidence, that whatever was causing Sam to kill more and more frequently in search of food had nothing to do with the child growing inside her.
We were running, then. Two months before, we saw your people watching us. Her at home, me at work, following us. Stalking us. We left home soon after we noticed, moving from motel to motel as we drove across the country, scared of what might happen to us if you caught up. She was already big at two months when I left her to feed. In the six years that I'd known her, I never told her that I was like her. I… I just didn't want to scare her away. I was so afraid of losing the mother of my child. Surely you understand that, don't you? God, I was twenty-four then. Twenty-four, Doctor. I never knew what to do whenever she bled, or when her belly swelled faster than we expected. Every time that happened, the fear would always creep back into my mind, the fear that it was because we were the same, and it was affecting Sarah in ways that I could never imagine. I was young, I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know until the day my daughter ate her way out of her mother's womb.
She was dead when I came back. Sarah had eaten Sam's face, her legs, her belly, torn out her neck. She was just a newborn, but when I saw her she looked like she was three. She had her mother's face, the same smile, the same wild look in her blue eyes. When I opened the door she was looking at me, fangs bared, her mother's blood smeared all over her face, dripping off her mouth. She was growing by the minute, but her gaze never left mine. That was when I realized that she could never be normal, not like me or her mother or anyone out there like us. My daughter was a monster.
I don't know what came over the both of us then. She charged at me, her fangs extended, her claws outstretched. She was like an animal, a beast, the hunger that had caused her to kill my wife now driving her to kill me. I caught her just as she leaped, her claws tearing at my face. I responded by letting my fangs out… and then I tore out her throat, just like she did to her mother. I let her bleed out on the floor, letting her drown in her own blood as her mother's blue eyes looked into mine. She was my daughter, Doctor. My own daughter, and I slaughtered her like an animal.
The agents caught up to us half an hour later. They saw me crying as I cradled the dead body of my daughter just as my wife lay mutilated a few feet behind me. I didn't resist when they took me. I didn't defend myself when they drove me here and threw me into a cell. I know what I've done. You know what I've done. I'm a monster. Just like my wife. Just like my daughter.
I'm turning forty-five in a few days. I haven't eaten a thing for five years. I have been sentenced to an eternity of imprisonment for the slaughter of my child, though they should be sentencing me for the deaths of so many more. And they will be, soon enough. They're moving me underground, Doctor, do you know that? To a place where I can't hurt anyone. Not anymore. Tomorrow, Doctor, when they take me out of this cell, I'll be descending as the last monster on Earth goes to Hell.


“Alright, um, so, I really don't want to do this.”
“I know.”
“But I have to, because —“
“You don't have to explain it to me.”
“I know, humor me? This is more for me than you.”
“At least you're aware.” She sighed. “Continue.”
“Th-thanks, really. So. Uh. I don't want to do this. But sometimes, things, well, they have to be done, and, last week, you got a really bad scrape on your leg when you were out picking blackberries —“
“You don't have to do this for every cut and bruise, you know.”
“— in our garden, and you know you're supposed to wear those gloves and knee high boots I got you when you're doing that —“
“I was wearing the gloves.”
“— but you weren't and so now I have to kill you.”
Pepper just rolled her eyes, and waited patiently for the needle.
“It might honestly be faster and more painless if you shot me in the head,” she suggested.
“I'm not going to shoot you in the head! How, how could you ever expect me to do that?”
“I don't like shots. The medical kind, I mean. Why don't you poison me or something?”
“We've talked about this.”
“I know, fine.”
“There's nothing I can put in food —“
“I said I know.”
“— that'll preserve your body in the same way —“
“Brian.”
The black haired beanpole of a man abruptly shut up, the thin layer of sweat on his forehead a dead giveaway for his intense discomfort… if his wide-eyed and tight-lipped expression wasn't enough already.
“Fine. You never let me grieve, you know.”
“Just hurry it up, we've got somewhere to be in two hours, and the sooner I die the sooner I can dress myself up.”
“Oh that won't be an issue.”
Pepper couldn't help but smile a little bit.
“You didn't really —“
But before she could finish the thought, Brian jammed the needle rather forcefully into her thigh, causing her whole body to tense, in an almost orgasmic gesture. Not totally incorrect, either — Brainy Brian had made sure the drug was as pleasant as possible. Pepper had yet to tell him that it was a sort of sexual experience. She expected it would weird him out; he had never stopped being bashful about that.
But before she could think about it much longer, the darkness closed in around her, in a strange and not wholly unpleasant mix of pleasure and terror. The last thing she saw before she went under was Brainy mouthing “so sorry…”

She woke up, slowly, like coming out of a deep slumber, on the bed just to the left of where she'd died. Brainy must have been speedy on this one; as she turned her head, she saw her previous body taking its last shallow breaths. Always a little eerie when that happened.
It made her smile.
“Wow, these sleeping pills are really working! I was out in a second!“
She turned her head away from her body, to her right, and saw Brainy already sitting up from a supine position and getting his shoes on.
“I can tell! I'm not even fully dead yet.”
“Heh, heheheh, wow, th-that's creepy.” The tying of his shoes slowed as he stared at her soon-to-be corpse. “You look so… pretty.”
“God damn necrophile.”
“Am not!”
“Are too.” Pepper sat up, and kissed him on the cheek, at which he giggled like an elementary-schooler.
“Okay, maybe just for you,” he said, with an all-encompassing blush and a too-shy smile. “Sorry I did it so… fast. If I catch you off guard, you don't wince and tense up so much, and you know I don't like hurting you.”
“I know.”
“And I know I don't need to do it for ‘every cut and bruise', I just want us to be perfect before going out —“
“I know.”
“— into the world and seeing the sights and tasting the tastes and all of that and I just wanted it to be as good as it possibly could be and every second we were out and you had that gash on your leg —“
“It had mostly healed up.”
“— I'd be thinking about how different it would be if you didn't, so I just had to get rid of it and I don't know how to heal bodies, just how to make them, and I thought ‘no harm no foul' and went ahead and I'm sorry I didn't tell you but I wanted you to not check in on the body's process because I made a new dress for it and it was a surprise.”
After all the worry in his expression, his lips had curled up at the corners once he reached the end of his ramblings. Pepper grinned back at him, that guessing grin that little kids had while shaking a Christmas present and wondering what's inside. She could already feel the velvety outfit on her skin. She raised her arm, and studied the black frills that fell around her wrist.
“You know I love black, and I know you love frills. Playing it safe so far, I see.”
“Pull-pull the frills back,” Brainy stuttered.
Pepper raised her eyebrows, and pulled them back. Underneath, there were more frills… but these ones were a bright, vibrant green.
“Ohh…”
She pulled the covers off herself, and sat up, admiring the other splashes of green among her smooth black surface. The first most noticeable examples were three green flowers on her right breast, and the line of green around her midriff.
“I'm liking it so far.”
As she stood up, the bell shaped bottom of her dress filled out, full of just as many frills as she expected. The outermost layer was black, but each coming in alternated between black and green. Her footwear were these small, Dorothy “this isn't Kansas anymore” shoes, coupled with tight green knee-high socks.
“Oh, I really like it.”
“Touch your hair.”
“Mm?”
“Tou—, uh, touch… there's a bow, right, in your…”
Pepper reached up, and found the bow clipped onto the top left of her black wavy hair. She smiled, her usual subdued kind of smile.
“It's green, isn't it?”
“It is. It is! Is the color scheme, is it…?”
“It's beautiful, Brainy. This is awesome. I want a mirror.”
“Thought you hated those.”
“Oh ha, ha, ha. Very funny.”
“If you get to poke fun at my trauma, I get to poke fun at yours.”
“Alright, fine then, you klutz.” She over-pronounced the “k” in “klutz”, because she was almost going to call him “kid killer”. There were moments, when she could joke like that with him. But now, with all the nerves of going on a trip? She figured it would do more harm than good. Maybe one of the coming days would bring the levity necessary to turn his past into a joke. It had worked before. Not often, but it had.
She brought herself to the bathroom, and saw just how carefully Brainy had styled her hair, as an added bonus to her costume. The black of her dress perfectly matched the black of her hair, and he had given her bright green lipstick. Looking herself up and down, she was impressed. Not that she should've been. Brainy was always this meticulous, this detail-attentive. In another life, he would have definitely been a fashion designer.
“Alright, one thing.”
“What thing?”
“The green lipstick is too much, I'm going to wash it off. Otherwise, I love it, thank you.”
She turned around and brought him in for a kiss, leaving his lips just a little green and his energy absolutely bubbling.
“Now go get your outfit on and your suitcases in the car while I'm in here, and then I'll help you take my body to the gym.”

While Brainy and Pepper carried the body down the stairs, Pepper noticed that the vessel hadn't even lost its warmth. No pulse, no breath, it had died a half hour ago, but it was still warm, and hadn't stiffened even slightly. Pepper and Brainy had plenty of experience disposing of the dead bodies of clients, and she knew that by now it should have at least been cold. It must have been part of the syringe's contents, a preserving elixir for the bodies of herself and Brainy.
The gym had once been a real gym, and so kept the name despite the redesign. Neither of them worked out: wasn't very necessary, now, was it?
She kicked open the door behind her at the bottom of the stairs, and helped pull her body into the cold, sterile room. Pepper liked the dark and dreary aesthetic a lot more than Brainy did, so they split between them the task of decorating the house, allowing each of them to interject their preferences. Pepper got to design the gym. As a result, the room was dim, musty, and cobwebbed on purpose.
On the left side were old Brainy bodies, and on the right were old Peppers. Each was held in its individual cylinder of cold, clear gelatin, suspending them in lively, theatric positions. Well, mostly Brainy's. Pepper's were usually more subdued, sometimes a little more devilish-looking, with her ever-tired eyes and sad half-smile on each of them. Each cylinder was lit from beneath and above, with colors to match the outfits on display.
They brought the old Pepper to a humanoid metal prop in the middle of the room, with which you could pose the body before it got submerged. This usually was a fun, lively process — sometimes they'd even combine a Brainy and a Pepper, and put them in a form of affection. Hugging, kissing, posing. Those displays came out around Valentine's day. Currently, they were below the floor, like the stores of unused gelatin. Right now, though, they didn't have time to pose. They just needed the body to be preserved before they went out.
So they pinned the Pepper onto the prop in a haphazard, half-assed fashion, and Pepper pressed the grey button on the wall that would press the body down into warm, malleable goo. They made sure not to freeze it in place yet, as this wasn't the pose they wanted for the future. A project for when they got back.
"Alright, with that done, we have…" Brainy checked his gold watch. "An hour and ten minutes to catch the train!"
"Sounds doable."
"Sounds very tight."
"Sounds doable, I said."
"Alright. Alright! Alright! Let's go!" Brainy bounded up the stairs, Pepper following soon after, taking far more time than he had. She caught up to him at the entryway, where he was slipping on his brown, leather, studded shoes. Brainy always dressed for the occasion, no matter what the occasion was, and this time was no different. Inspired by the era of steam locomotives (not that this train was a real steam locomotive), Brainy had done his best to dress up like he was "old money". Of course, he wasn't, but he was "money" minus the "old", so he was prepared to look like it. Foregoing his usual chromatic extremes, he had settled into a brown, red and black. No doubt the black was to go with Pepper's dress, the red was likely an intended contrast, but the brown befuddled her. Still, she didn't ask. Querying Brainy about his fashion choices was just asking for a long-winded, one-sided conversation. Just thinking about it made Pepper…
…giddy, actually.
But there honestly wasn't time for that.
After a last minute straightening of his bowtie in the mirror — a process that surely would have taken longer had Pepper not given him a look — they finally pushed open their stained glass doors and got into the car. Pepper plugged the address into the car, and waited patiently for it to begin driving itself.

The train wasn't one of those old trains, no, but it was made to look and feel like one. That was sort of its selling point. There were even train cars in which little "plays" happened from actors and actresses selling the time of ye olde railroad. Wasn't romanticizing the railroad an American thing? Pepper honestly wasn't sure, it's not like she'd done the research. Either way, they hadn't taken one of the theatric cars. Brainy and Pepper (mostly Pepper, admittedly) wanted to have a quiet train ride, looking out across acres and acres of green in the English countryside, on their way to the ferry that would take them into Northern Ireland.
Their booth had a lovely red leather couch and an artificially old-looking table, on which they had stacked a pile of travel snacks, including some of the new Wondertainment candies that had come out. They had a tradition of buying the entirety of the new catalog of sweets every two months. They could only bring the magicless ones with them on the public train, of course, but that still gave them a hefty amount — Wondertainment seemed to be launching a campaign to reach the mundane markets under the leadership of Judy Papill, an coworker and old friend of Brainy's. Well, not anymore. Not a coworker, and probably not a friend, either.
First, they opened a package of some "gourmet" chocolates, and started popping them in.
"Hmm…" Brainy chewed.
"Hmm?" Pepper replied.
"Dark," Brainy finished. "Dark chocolate."
"Yes. That is indeed what the box said."
"I don't like reading the boxes before I eat. It takes out the surprise. And this was an unpleasant surprise."
"So what you're saying is… I can have the rest?"
"Absolutely."
"Sweet." Pepper took the whole box, and scooted it towards her end of the table.
Unlike the extremely speedy vacuum tube trains that were now the norm, this ride had the familiar bumps and tumbles that Pepper remembered from when she was young, way back when.
"How can you like dark chocolate?"
"The same way I like coffee," Pepper replied.
Brainy shuddered. Just about the only time he could coffee was when it was more milk and sugar than anything else. He'd always been more of a tea type, anyways. Of course, that might have been spawned from a Wonder World!™ upbringing, where tea was most definitely the drink of the hour. Even more than soda, strangely enough. Maybe it had something to do with their Boston location. Boston, Boston Tea Party, Wondertainment… Pepper hadn't ever really done the research, so who knew. She tended not to do research on most things.
"Bitter," Brainy concluded.
"Bitter indeed," Pepper said around a mouthful of sweets. Looking over at him, she could see him getting that smile, that I'm-about-to-launch-into-a-tangent smile. "What?"
"Well," Brainy straightened up, "I felt that oddly fitting, you know? How you like bitter things, and I like sweet things. You like dark, I like bright. It's a running theme, see? And you can trace it all the way back. I'm just wondering, like, flavors."
"Flavors?"
"Flavors! About us, what would we taste like? What are our flavors? And more than that, how have they changed? Sorry, this sounds so unrelated, but my mind was on… well, paid vacations, right? Like this one. I, uh, started with a… vacation, that went a little wrong, and in the aftermath of that, I met you, and you, well, you were far more bitter back then. Bitter, bitter, bitter. I think you were right to be bitter, actually, but it's really… inspiring? To see how you've… you've…"
"Mellowed?"
"Yes! Mellowed. Calmed down. Become less… biting. Sorry. Sorry, I didn't mean to make this insulting."
"No, it's fine. It's hard to get under my skin."
"Well it is now."
Pepper shrugged, and popped another chocolate into her mouth. "I think you taste like strawberries."
"Aww."
"Sweet, but acutely sour."
"Ohh."
"Maybe more like… a strawberry pie, where the flavor's been a bit diluted by all this crust and saccharine filling. Like, the sour's been lost, after all the preparation. Oo, oo, maybe you wake up a strawberry, and after you dawn your makeup fancy clothes, that's when you're the pie, and it takes a lot of getting to know you to find the strawberry inside. How's that? I'm a fucking poet."
"That sounds a little hurtful."
"Really?"
"Am I not me when I'm… in pie form?"
"You're you, but you're dressed-up you."
"Mmm. But you're also saying I taste better with preparation."
"Not so true. The flavors are just… different."
"Different?"
"Yeah."
There was a pause as a bag of white chocolate turtles was broken open, and the contents shared. Pepper chewed and stared out of the windows. They had yet to leave the city, but they were getting into the more suburban parts of London, where spots of grass could be found on lawns and there seemed to be naturally growing trees in some areas rather than none.
"I think," Brainy said, "that you're a… hmm."
Pepper waited patiently for the thought to come to him of its own volition.
"There's something swimming in my head about you being a sort of nut. I'm bad at this, because most of the dishes I'm familiar with are either very fancy, or very sweet, and I don't think you're either."
"Pah. Rude."
"If I thought I was going to insult you, I wouldn't have said it, heheh. Umm. But, I'd say you have a shell, but really, you had a shell, and I think… it's largely gone now."
"Mm."
There was another pause.
"Sorry, you were so much better at this."
"It's alright. I'm used to being good."
"Heheh, shush you."
Pepper turned to be facing away from Brainy, and then fell back into him, smiling when he jumped at her sudden touch. He angled himself towards her as best he could, and moved his right arm around her belly so that his hand rested on the left side of her hip, which he gently rubbed affectionately.
Pepper finished chewing a turtle before saying: "You know what?"
"What?"
"I'm proud of you."
"Aww, what for?"
"You didn't stutter that whole time."
Brainy took a long time to respond, and every second he was silent was a second that Pepper felt smugger than before.
"I guess I didn't," he said very slowly.
"Why the pause?"
"I had to keep myself from getting flustered, so I wouldn't l-lose my — gosh!"
Pepper felt his body tense, and couldn't help but laugh. Her laugh sounded deeper than she thought it should. If she listened back to it on a recording, it sounded like a kind of "huh huh huh", and she thought it was just about the ugliest noise she made. Well, no, her worst sound was her singing voice. But at least whenever she did that, it was voluntary, and usually served the purpose of playfully annoying people.
Brainy yawned.
"Sleepy?"
"I, uh, stayed up all night, making the final touches on your dress."
"Mmm, should I let you nod off then?"
"I think I'm, uh, headed that direction, yeah."
"I'll try not to wiggle too much then."
The train was going to take an atmospheric four hours to get to their destination, but Pepper was wide awake. Getting a new body did that — they always seemed to start up with a full tank, so to speak. Brainy had given himself a new physique two days ago. He thought it would be beneficial to get that task out of the way earlier than he had on previous trips, but it proved to be anxiety-inducing for him. He was comically careful not to bruise or scratch himself before the vacation, so he could look spick and span.
Pepper cared far less about looks than he did. He tried to respect her boundaries on the concern, but it was difficult to, seeing as he literally molded her body. His twitchy, compulsive brain always wanted to tend to all the small things, make her absolutely spotless. Pepper had silently conceded on that point, allowing them to get to their current looks, but she'd been very stern when he had tried to plan her outfits for her. He could make her things, but she wouldn't stand for him telling her when she should wear them.
Wait, fuck, by making this outfit and putting it on her, he'd gotten around that, hadn't he? Sly ess-oh-bee.
"Mind if I have the rest of the chocolates, Brian?"
She got no response. He must have stayed up really late, then, to fall asleep so fast. It's a wonder she hadn't noticed he was so tired earlier. Of course, that was a skill of his. Brainy had just about mastered the art of looking like he was one thing when he really was the other. The business world had been hard on him, when it came to putting on a face for customers. It was another layer to his costumes, Pepper thought. More dough on the crust.
She reached over and pulled another bag of chocolates towards her. Wait, no… toffee. She brought a bag of toffee towards her and ripped it open, proceeding to search for the largest, most delicious-looking piece she could find. After the acquisition, she rested her head on Brainy's skinny chest, and looked across the aisle, out the opposite window. It was finally turning into countryside.
"Missing all the beauty of our country, Brainy." She took a bite of the toffee. "Weird to think I was born here. I totally lost my accent when I was ported over to the United States in an auction. Good times. Bleah."
They weren't good times.
The centuries between now and then helped, and having a body seemed like a useful thing to hold onto. Not that she ever felt like her body was truly hers. It was synthetic. She was the passenger that drifted between bodies on a whim. Maybe she'd never really gotten a body. Maybe she'd gotten a vessel better than a mirror.
That was stupid.
This was a stupid train of thought.
Her focus came back to reality once she noticed the family sitting in the booth across from them. It was a mother, father, and a daughter, playing some card game on the available table. Maybe Apples to Apples. It couldn't have been too fun with only three people, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.
They weren't an attractive family unit. If Pepper were to guess, she'd say that they were a family made up of the outcasts of mundane society. When you've got no one, you'll take anyone. Maybe that was a little judgmental. Pepper knew she had a habit of doing that; seeing people and trying to figure them out without context. Prejudice, she thought.
She was a prejudiced person, at heart. She knew Brainy wouldn't have the same hangups. For someone who regularly repeated "image is everything", he didn't seem to notice anyone's but his own and Pepper's. Not a single second was spent eyeing someone up and down, noting their footwear, legwear, chestwear, headwear, handwear, or any of the rest of their -wears. He only noticed enough so that he could compliment them on it. Even things that didn't look good, he seemed to think were just the most amazing things. Pepper wondered where the mental block was. She couldn't buy that he was so involved in the outfits of his loved ones, and then completely ignorant to the fashion of others.
But she knew that these thoughts couldn't be what was making her feel so uneasy. When she came back to, she found herself making uncomfortable eye contact with the daughter, and swiftly averted her gaze. She stared back out the window, out at the rolling green hills. But that was a mistake. The border of her vision just vaguely outlined the backlit heads of the parents. Something combined in a jarring, familiar mix of emotions, yet subtly, in that way that someone can still be happy while the gears have already been set in motion to have them crying within the hour. But Pepper was clever enough to catch it. And she knew what it was about.
Had she really never ventured out into the countryside, not once in the last forty years? Had she unknowingly restricted herself to the city, had she only ever opened Ways to deserts?
Clearly, it had been far too long.

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