Let’s Not [Obliterate]

 

Three hundred years ago, Theora’s favourite distraction may have been to close her eyes and nap for a century or two. Now, in reality, that did not quite seem appropriate. Especially because her life was very fast paced; emergencies and burials happened every day, and people did not have access to magically enhanced Skills that they could use to interact with their surroundings to alleviate some of that pressure.

So, Theora did not distract herself by falling asleep. Instead, she could practise playing the guitar. She could go to work. She could lie in bed, head on Dema’s belly, melting into Dema’s fingers scratching through her hair, fully awake. She could tidy up their apartment, she could think about the coming Thursday — Serim had convinced them to try out a street performance. Theora could even think about the lyrics of Dema’s songs; at least the ones she’d heard so far. That was for sure the most embarrassing distraction, it was also one that stuffed her chest with warm and fuzzy soft cotton.

These distractions weren’t always enough. Sometimes during a slow moment, on her way to work or as she returned from an emergency call, Theora would remember having abandoned a daughter. The knowledge of that was fuzzy at the edges, threatening more pieces left to uncover; a hint at even more people she’d left behind.

Besides that slumbered yet more knowledge better forgotten, better not talked about, at least for now. Memories that, if recalled, would crumble Theora apart.

She knew better than to try uncovering it now.

The secret buried at Heofen.

That thought came so violently it made her crash against the bathroom wall, breaking tiles. She managed to grasp a cupboard to avoid slipping, and took a few deep breaths.

Knowledge better forgotten.

“Everything alright?” Dema asked, pulling open the door without knocking and getting a good look at Theora’s half-naked figure. She clenched her phone at the sight. “Ah. Done showering?”

“Yes.” Theora reached for a shirt on the stand. Dema kept staring as Theora put it on. That mystified gaze — one of the best distractions.

Theora paced towards the door, skin hot, fingers grazing the broken tiles so hard they clattered to the ground in pieces. She reached Dema. What might be the best place to kiss her? Just as she was about to decide, Theora’s gaze fell onto the screen of the phone.

She turned away.

“Ah,” Dema let out. “Just chatting with our… well, our daughter. As they say! Thanks for the tea, by the way, that way I don’t have to stab myself.”

“Did you tell her…”

Dema nodded immediately. “She’s not upset. In fact, I think she wants to hug ya! Relatable, not gonna lie.”

“I’m glad the connection seems to be working. You were able to send the splinters back?”

“Yeah. She says she’s waiting for me to return to put them back. Like, why would I know how to do that!”

Theora did not want to think about that. What she wanted was to leave the bathroom and crash on the couch. But Dema was in the way, blocking the entire door frame.

Theora placed her hands on Dema’s hips and, in one fell swoop, leaned down to kiss her neck and turned them both around to switch places. She let go and stepped into the living area.

“Damn, you’re bold,” Dema rasped, the taps of her bare feet on the wooden boards following close behind. “That bad to just see a message?”

Theora shrugged. She pulled a random tattered book to herself with her toes and a blanket up from the ground with her fingers. “I… I think it’s fairly safe to assume that Invent One is correct — we are travellers from far away, and came to this world as Shadows of ourselves. And that being Shadows is in some ways good, and in others, a little inconvenient. And… I think the — the larger me, so to speak — prefers it this way. I kind of do too. Being more than a Shadow sounds scary. I’ll get the tiles fixed later, sorry about that.”

Dema scratched her head. “Travellers from another world, huh… Not gonna lie, I’m kinda jealous of our larger, um — usses? … wes … selves!”

“Why are you jealous?” Theora asked, wrapping the blanket around her legs and making a point of leaving enough space on the couch for Dema to join.

Dema gave a lopsided smile and threw her phone onto the bed on the other side of the room. “Why, if those dreams I sometimes have are real, that means our larger selves had so much time to cuddle. I feel left out!”

Theora laughed out loud. She hooked fingers with Dema to pull her down onto the couch. “It’s fine, we can cuddle now.”

Dema let herself fall with a yelp, and accepted Theora’s embrace.

“Still, it leaves the question,” Theora added. “What do we do? I know what I said, but I’m just me. Do we want to find out more about this? Do we want to go back? Or do we…”

“Stay?”

Theora shrugged. “I’m asking you. I can be a bit stubborn but I don’t want to decide this alone. If you want us to investigate… if you want to know more?”

Dema gave a gentle smile. “I’m fine staying like this a while longer. It does seem like we remember the relevant stuff anyway when it comes up.”

“Yeah.”

“Like, I somehow really miss drinking lava tea!”

“Oh, gosh.” Theora smiled. “I’m not sure that would be possible here. But I miss it too. Let’s do that again, whenever we get back.”

“Yeah,” Dema said. “It’s a date!”

“It’s a date,” Theora echoed, scratching Dema’s head. Her thoughts went back to Dema’s first song, the one about a volcano. “Seems like I asked you out first.”

“Why, you little rascal,” Dema rumbled softly. She pushed herself up to peck a kiss against Theora’s chin, before falling back down into her lap. “I feel like you’re in a good mood.”

Theora shrugged. “What can I say, you make me happy. And I’m trying not to think about things that don’t. Meeting Invent One has kind of cleared up to me what those things are, I guess.” She just needed to keep herself and her thoughts occupied.

Dema nodded. “But since you mention the song — I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

“Like… the band. I was wondering… If IO really came here all on her own from far away… isn’t she gonna be lonely?”

“Ah,” Theora threw Dema a smile. “I don’t know if she’s the type to get lonely, but who knows. I suppose you want to invite her to the band?”

“How did you know?!”

Theora booped Dema’s nose. “Because I’ve been thinking the same, to be honest. I reacted poorly when I first met her.” Theora wasn’t going to make strong assumptions about Invent One — maybe she didn’t like human company, or maybe she just didn’t care. But what if she did? “We are the only other ‘travellers’ she seems to know in this world, so the least we could do would be to offer some company.”

And so, with a smile, Dema started the recruiting process.

 

A few days went by without any successes, and after her third failed attempt, Dema ruffled her hair in frustration. “Gah!”

Serim snorted; she was over to visit, all of them sitting on the couch in Theora’s living room watching documentaries about the quantum multiverse, which she had for some reason gotten very passionate about after their encounter with Invent One.

“Are you having trouble?” Theora asked, looking over Dema’s shoulder at the chat log. It appeared that Invent One had no clue what Dema was trying to ask her to do.

Dema leaned back, against Theora’s shoulder. “Maybe…” Dema hummed. “I dunno. If we get to know her better, we might find a way to convince her? Or perhaps we should ask her to come to our street performance. What I mean is, we kinda need an angle to get her to join…”

“I’m inspired by your confidence in our playing,” Serim said. “That you think it will make an alien want to join us.” As far as Theora knew, Invent One was not an alien. “You roped in Theora by first teaching her an instrument, didn’t you?” Serim continued. “How would we get IO to care about music?” 

“Maybe if we find out the reason why she came to this world, we could connect to that somehow,” Theora mused. Giving Dema input on her schemes was fun. 

With a gasp, Dema lit up. “That’s our angle! We just gotta ask her for more favours. I think she likes explaining things? Otherwise, why would she? So maybe we just gotta pretend we’re interested.”

“I mean, I am in fact desperately interested,” Serim admitted, and looked over at Theora. “Will you be fine, though?”

“Yes,” Theora said. Well, mostly, probably. Invent One and Theora were both connected to Amanda in some way. That connection felt worth exploring despite everything else.

Meanwhile, Dema went back to her phone to write a few messages, and eventually received a promising reply:

IO: You wish to learn yet more? Insatiable. I expect time could be made for another encounter.

You: Let’s make time, then!

“That actually worked, huh?” Serim said, and Theora could feel muscles tense through the blankets. Serim really did seem interested.

 

Then, on a Sunday in the second half of November, they all finally made that time, with Invent One inviting them to join her in the local library. After scuttling in, they found her on the ground amidst countless document piles, and sat down at the table next to her.

“So, this is where you—” Dema started while scanning the backs of the books in the closest shelves, and then, in an attempt to echo Invent One’s monotonous way of speaking, quoted, “‘Conduct your research’?”

Invent One was browsing the pages of a large book. She talked without looking up. “Yes.”

“That’s actually kind of what we’ve been wondering about,” Serim weighed in. “What are you researching?”

“Poems,” Invent One said.

“In an encyclopaedia?”

Invent One looked up. “The structure of this book resembled poetry.”

“If you want the poetry itself, you should look at an anthology,” Serim suggested. “Or, better yet, the internet.”

“The internet is difficult to observe, but I have parsed through large segments of it,” Invent One said. “The poem I wish to find may be held in a book that was not yet digitised.”

“Well then,” Serim continued, “when was it written? Who was the author? We’d be looking in different places if it was written ten years ago, compared to two thousand years ago. What do you know about it?”

“I’m not aware of most of the information you seek,” Invent One admitted. “It’s part of the difficulty of my research. My companion excavated a poem in this world. It used to recite a translation to me. I wish to hear the poem as it would have been spoken by a Shadow, not as my companion translated it for me.”

“Oh.” Serim nodded. “Well, you should perhaps write down what you remember the poem being about, for us. Do you even know which language it’s written in? Humans use like, thousands.”

Invent One considered. “I am fairly certain that my companion visited this geographical and temporal location. If I were to continue searching for the poem here, there is a chance I could find it, even if it was written elsewhere, or earlier.”

Theora didn’t like the sound of that. “Is that — time travel, or something? Same temporal location? Is there a chance we can meet your companion?”

“There is no chance of meeting it,” Invent One said. “It’s not here anymore.”

Serim said, “Invent One keeps talking about ‘Shadows’ and a ‘Larger Self’, so I assume we are interacting with a projection?”

Dema looked confused. “Meaning?”

“Meaning Invent One isn’t actually here? By extension, its” — Serim looked over to gauge IO’s reaction, and found none — “companion may not have been here either.”

Dema ruffled through her hair. “I don’t really get that.”

“Because you are Shadows,” Invent One supplied. 

Dema frowned. “Yeah…?”

“Invent One is implying that it’s not a Shadow,” Serim said. “Instead, it is here as a Shadow. Meaning Invent One’s ‘Larger Self’ would be what casts it.”

“Oh!” Dema’s eyes widened. “So you’re like a cloud?”

Invent One hesitated for a few moments, chewing its lips. “Imagine a train. You are sitting in the foremost section, piloting it. If you leave, the train will cease to move. But will it cease to exist?”

“... No?”

Invent One nodded. “Because you are just the head. Your past will keep existing once the pilot leaves, like the dead body of a snake lying in the grass. But beings such as I are not the pilots, nor the heads, we are the trains, the entire snake. When we disappear, all traces of us decay.”

Dema still seemed dissatisfied with the answer, but unable to formulate a follow-up question, so she let it rest. “We still gotta know what the poem’s about, though…”

“I will recognise it when I perceive it,” Invent One said.

“Then how are we gonna help!” Dema said pleadingly. “Isn’t there some better way to find it?”

Invent One stared into nothing for a while, thinking, perhaps. “For most intents and purposes, my access to this world should be considered read-only. After learning human languages, I was able to piece together some of this world’s functionality. Reading out data from the internet turned out to be somewhat doable, but accessing the molecular structure of books and deriving meaning from the position of the ink is difficult, unless I see it with my eyes and extract information from it the way Shadows do. Therefore, I am not aware of a way for you to help.” It looked at Dema. “It is you who insisted on coming.”

Dema grumbled and went back to the books.

“What is read-only access?” Theora asked.

Serim looked up. “Computer thingy. Like when you can read stuff about the world in a story but not write new facts about it, like in a journal.”

Silence came over them for a while, only broken by the occasional sound of IO flipping through pages. Eventually, Dema took a deep breath. It seemed like she was going to make her attempt now.

“By the way,” she said. “I was thinking we could maybe play on the streets tomorrow. I called the brigade and took Theora off duty, and she said she can finish work early.”

“Sounds good to me,” Serim said. She looked at the thick clouds outside the window. “They forecast a blizzard tonight, right? If that happens, we could play ‘Red in Snow, Overflow’.”

Dema tilted her head. “Isn’t that one a bit of a downer? I wrote it when I was sad.”

Serim shrugged. “All of your songs are downers in their own unique little ways.”

“Really? No way! What about ‘Volcano Goes Boom’?”

“... That one’s about how you feel so in love and head over heels for someone, but still can’t even share your needs with them. It’s heartbreaking.”

Theora scratched her head. She thought Volcano Goes Boom was a very happy song; it always made her feel warm. “Perhaps the one who is being a downer in her own unique little way is you, Serim.”

Dema laughed. “We’re all downers in our own unique little ways! Wait, let’s write a song about that. By the way, IO, do you wanna join our band?”

“What?” Invent One looked confused.

Serim’s eyes glinted, and she smiled. “Yeah, you should join, actually. Think about it. Songs are poems — at the very least the lyrics are. Have you considered that the text you are looking for might in fact be a song?”

Invent One stared, apparently lost in the consideration, while Dema started gushing something about this ‘angle’ being ‘amazing’ in a flurry of repetitive praise, until she slipped on one of IO’s document piles.

Invent One picked a random sheet of paper out of the resulting mess. It looked at the encyclopaedia. “I suppose even in the case that the poem was not a song, being around Shadows might aid in my research.” 

“So…?” Dema asked in anticipation while crawling a big further, straining the sheets even more under her weight.

“Fine,” IO said. “I will make an attempt.”