Despite your reservations, you follow him without resistance, without needing to think about it. He sputters when you flick water into his face, grabbing onto his shoulders when he tries to splash you under so that both of you’ll be dragged down if he does. His laugh is a cracking deep noise that makes your body feel warm, your mouth widening into a matching smile as you lean into him, holding him close, fingers against the nape of his neck, upon the fringes of his wet hair.
Overhead, the moon shines bright against the water, illuminating the two of you as you both laugh.
The natural, conserved degradation of a biological cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components/the practice of biting or consuming one's body.
The past Wifies did not consider disposal of a clone suicide. But a real player's feelings towards their other selves is inherently separate to a clone's. Wifies can share his selfhood.
Kenadian lied when he let Wifies out into the world. He imagines it, sitting at the hideout she’d brought the two of them into, then three when Wato dropped in from whoever knows where, and he thinks that it must have been easy. Like pushing trash into a recycling bin.
That statement’s sharper than what he means though. Ken wouldn’t lie to him, wouldn’t mean to. But he believed everything and anything those days. Especially from his savior.
It’s easy to be around Squiddo. It’s easy, or at least not difficult, to walk around Parrot and follow him down Lifesteal’s terrain until there’s a duel or PVP or anything that could unravel a wire in his sealing, to sit around the set of Unstable and be company for the passing off-duty actors or Ken, Wato. Being human doesn’t hurt him. Ken didn’t know everything.
Either she was wrong, or just too concerned about his situation. His wires could be tucked underneath metal and silicon. His biology is no impediment to him, even as an obsolete device. An escapist needs to be a fast learner, and Wifies has always learned best with a visual, active example. If Ken was here, if he could see him now, then Wifies knows that she would be proud.
Being near Squiddo makes him pick up his slack faster. Going around them and their orbit of general Squiddo-ness lets him learn. He’s almost human, as much as the thought excites and scares him.
They bleed from a spider bite, and he learns how to recolor the fluids that grind against his motors into a redstone-dyed red; they scream in terror, and he looks behind him and feels that prey-animal fear again, but different, lighter; they laugh into his air and he tries to feel that noise swell up in his own voicebox, the sound unfamiliar to him but still easy.
It’s scary too, but it’s on purpose; horror mods that replace the edge under his silicon skin with things that affirm it, tell him that this fear is needed. The first Wifies never mentioned anything related to others. There’s no indirect way to know what they or anyone else could know. If he’s scared, then that’s on him, the mods, not his falseness.
He’s trying. He’s learning. He’s not the best at it. What he is, it’s natural that it would be their curiosity.
So he’s not startled enough to jump a double block when they start the new world with the new horror mod, and ask him, “What is ‘Evilfies’, bro?”
What is a good term, Wifies thinks, checking the buzz of his communicator to see a definitely inaccurate death message for Squiddo. He’s a little surprised that they waited this long to ask; Parrot and the others wasted little time compared to them.
“He wasn’t… it’s not really that bad,” Wifies starts, his hands gathering wood absentmindedly, his voice smooth. It’s not lying if it’s partially true. “It was a long time ago, but back in my day, my original—” The leaves break under his hands, the bark splintering into the grooves of his palms. He’s no more real than you, Ken told Wifies once. “—the evil version me was mass producing clones of himself. Then killing and recycling them. But then I beat him up and dumped him into the void, so there’s no way he’s coming back.”
“Even with the mod?”
“Even with the mod. He’s not that powerful,” he agrees, turning to the acacia tree, movement in the corner of his eye. “Wait, there’s a sign—did you write this sign?”
“No? What does it say?”
I know you.
Give me life.
Let me free.
Wifies looks up, glancing around the trees as if there’ll be some trace of the other him. Alone, he concludes, shoulders lowering, no sign of anything around but Squiddo and him.
“Did Evilfies write that?” they ask, uneased from the waver in their words. From where? He’s dozens of servers away, Wifies almost retorts, but it’s better for home addresses to stay under lock and key.
Instead, a laugh bubbles in his throat before he swallows it down, shaking his head. “No, he’s not that creative.”
And he doesn’t play these games.
When he shows up, it’s obvious. Bedrock and puzzles to test his usefulness. He’s cold and scrutinizing and knowing; there is no subtle manipulation when they have the same brain. Only blatant rerouting and guidance into what he wants; it’s overt.
This reads more like a wayward clone than him. Not all of the other Wifii were fully made and sentient in the factory, but some were, and he didn’t tell Ken but he let them go, the ones able to know and think. They didn’t deserve to live down there forever. He didn’t tell Ken; the relationship he has with them is... if they collapsed, broke down, or short-circuited then they would come back to him. Then he would fix them and let them leave. It’s kinder than anything the evil him would have given. It’s different from a real player’s relationships.
He looks away from the flicker of pillars around them, the bedrock dusting the sky in grey. It makes his nose sniffle, and his eyes water from the cough at the back of his throat alone, nothing else.
“Whoa,” Squiddo says, and he waits, but they don’t have anything else to add, the sound of mining faint. Wifies kneels down and picks up his stone pickaxe from where he dropped it in the grass.
“What about you?” Wifies asks, standing around the crater left around the tall oak.
“What?”
“Squevil; what does your evil version do in her free time?”
“Probably spends it being unfunny, and—” Squiddo makes a noise, exclaiming in surprise as apparently something happens. Wifies grips the wooden handle and turns to the cave he saw them last. “And glitching me out apparently! What the hell, my eyes, augh—”
“Your eyes? Can you see—you’re okay Squiddo?”
“Augh, yeah, yeah, it’s gone now—”
____
There is a secret: Wifies is always lying. Lying is the wrong word, yes, but it is the closest word to what he is allowed to use. Because he is being smart. Calculating. Mindful.
If him—the Unstable, actor him which he does not remember and he is almost convinced was some other clone—leaving means that he does not love the left, then that means terrible things. Only towards himself, to the internal quiet parts, but still as terrible. Because then that would mean that:
Kenadian does not love him. Or Wifies does not love Kenadian in the way he wants to. Which is fine. Not fine as in happily or easy, but if Ken cannot love him in the way that he thinks he does then Wifies will learn, because he always can, and if he cannot love Ken in the way that he wants to then Ken has shown him that will not matter, that there will be a space at the table empty for him because they haven’t gotten the third chair yet.
Wato does not not love him. But then again, Wifies is the one that leaves mainly, and freedom is the easiest and most needed thing between the three of them. So really, these two points are mainly nothing in the grand scheme of things.
His creator, original, evil him did not want him to go. It was not in his hands to leave for Ken was the one at the button. Ergo; he did not leave his creator, and his creator did not leave him. They were loving by definition. This tidbit makes Wifies’s life marginally difficult.
Wifies does not like to think much. This also makes his life harder, but in a different way; escape rooms, PVP strategies, and how to navigate the mess of machinery installed within himself, in a way that's fine as a cut scabbing over is, the arrows puncturing my side already pulled out with the marks regenerated over.
It is easier this way, because this way means that he will not have to remember the hanging root-like posturing of his others. Not brothers because he does not remember being held and the idea of ever having siblings sends a grief that strikes down to the marrow of his bones, so therefore what they are, were is something alone to clones.
The skinned self hanging like livestock butchered haunts him when he used to lie down in the little cot that was used to escape. Kenadian let him keep it after she left. He did so an hour after they, more so she, killed the original Wifies.
Evil Wifies. Wifies doesn't know if it matters but Kenadian is sore about his originality and creating clones to kill them off and recycle them isn’t a good action by any metric of his or theirs. Even if he and the other clones were his. Ownership doesn’t dictate absolute control. He shouldn't think about this. Anyways.
That leaving, even if just a few days long, meant that Wifies was allowed to his own devices. His creator's. Whatever; his creator was Wifies and he is Wifies as well, ergo his creator's things are now his. The factory, the other clones, the tubes, the logs, the communicator, it's all his now.
It does not matter that the past Wifies was right in that there could only be one, because if the universe has not enough space for him then Wifies will simply make space.
It is the least he is owed from the creator that loved him.
During the days he is alone, Wifies sleeps in the factory. He drags the bed over to the cold office where a draft is residing and pulls the blanket over his head and shuts his eyes, pretending that he hears no scratching of the clones, no hum of electricity whirring through the devices which had once cradled him, and no sound like a ringing communicator.
Eventually, he has to give up. His eyes are heavy as he gathers himself, bringing his stare over to the device shaking on the desk, the call sound reverberating deep into his skull. Wifies grimaces, before standing up and grabbing it.
The name of the contact is unknown to him, because an escapist doesn't need attachments while a player does, so Wifies commits the name ParrotX2 to memory to make up for his lack and then picks up.
In the early days of his assimilation, he was a very bad player. The conversation that followed was and is unnecessary except to serve as an example of how insufficient Wifies was then to the universe.
There is a reason why Parrot knew third.
____
People say that if you look long enough into the void, it begins to look back.
The past Wifies, the original, the evil one was not one to tell stories. He would not tuck his clones in with a bedtime story, he would not recite their reports back to them, and he would most certainly not warn them about the horrors of the outside world. There was no way for Wifies to know this. Another disadvantage of being an automated creation.
He does not return to his creation world often. After Ken had returned, Wato with a scar against the side of his face next to her, there was no longer a reason to. He had a new home world, he had a way of joining new servers, and so he had no need of the factory and the cold bedrock-barrier-void expanse.
But even clones get homesick sometimes.
The void is cold out here. Over the barriers, Wifies dangles his legs into the nothingness, taunting the universe into reaching out, unwinding him from his very duplicated being. It makes him feel weightless, the air whistling through his ears.
His eyes dart from everywhere, to the sky blinking above him, the sun ray twinkling in the wind, the fingerprints on the barriers holding him, then down, below into the depth that must have been where his creator had gone.
Wifies thinks; this was before he learned that it was better not to, and he pulls onto that prey-animal fear he felt looking the past Wifies in the eye, feels it nestled deep into his very being and attempts to revel in it. He feels his fingers grow numb, his body tense like a coiled wire, his mechanics whirring and pulsing inside of him as a human heart could with its own beat. Not for the first time, he wonders what it would feel like to have his own organics.
Perhaps very boring. Still, it does not stop him from considering the whispers crawling up to meet his ears, of the promises of deals in the past, of how easy it could grant that meaningless wish, of the silver white of porcelain and the power residing within. These all work, make him tilt his head and try to find the glint of the thing in blue, at least until he remembers that his gears are rusting and that he needs to fix that so then promptly leaves, the interaction quickly forgotten.
Maybe he should have told Ken when they came back. Wifies does not speculate on what exactly that thing was in the void, except for when he tries to think about the constructer of all those escape rooms, of their green ears and tail and white shiny mask, and he wonders where that mask of theirs went.
Even then, Wifies may have forgotten the entity itself, but he did not forget the feelings it gave him.
It is weeks, nearly months after that bout of homesickness, when he has almost perfectly readjusted and assimilated, when Wifies raises the topic of ARG world investigating. It is not for permission; he is his own person as Ken and Wato like to tell him multiple times, but it is for context. The three of them have trouble with that, with their new adventures and excursions almost every other week with no calls or voicemails or texts left behind, so if it comes to it, Wifies will be the one to provide.
Ken is at the table in his own home world, overlooking a series of blueprints for some new bizarre escape room, when their head rises, and she looks at him acutely. Wifies does not look down to see if his silicon is torn open and his metal exposed, but he comes close.
"I've already been exploring some, and it was—" Fun is the wrong word, because fun is not similar to what Wifies went through in the escape rooms and what he is feels in those worlds is so much similar, it makes him feel like he's back there. "—wonderful, and interesting too, you should have been there yourself Ken, and oh, Wato too."
Ken makes an amused sound despite his widened eyes, alert ears, and shakes her head. "Wato's busy," they murmur, and Wifies shrugs.
"She can make time. And he could use the inspiration; it was so haunting, it was nice in there. The setting was eerie, and the entity—" Wifies cuts himself with a laugh at Ken's face, a pinched grimace with raised fur, an obvious confusion set into her features.
"I'm sorry," he says after a breath, eyes crinkled and mouth set into an only slightly apologetic grin, "I forgot that you don't prefer this stuff."
To their credit, Ken only fixes him with a raised brow and a glint in her eyes.
"It's fine," he laughs back after a tick, stilted, clipped, with an edge to the sound. Wifies does not think it sounds very fine, but then again player voices are so variable, it's always hard for him to tell.
He knows that it is reasonable; she has not seen what I had. As far as he knows, Wifies had looked death in the eye and faced it in a trivia match, and had then decided from that long hour of prey animal fear that he wanted more so he found more.
But they still laugh with him so Wifies does not stop, joins them in the sound.
In that instant, the realization a sweet bite into satisfaction, Wifies knows he won't ask for permission the next time he sees his creator. He will take Squiddo's hand and smile back.
The reasons for war don't matter much to us. We want to fight they way a woman wants to be gracious, the way a man wants to be firm. Our need is as vamp-fierce as the strutting queen and dryly subtle as the dapper lesbian and comfortable as the soft resilience of the demiwoman. How often do you analyze the reasons for your own gender?
— I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter, by Isabel Fall.
Ze thinks about childhood, guns, and gender; all in that order.
Inspired by princess by @/silliest-heartaches on tumblr
Inspired by Watching over you! by mizu_mizu
drafted: 1/27/26
I am not a violent man. Yes, I know my way around a gun; the trigger, the safety, the cartridge, familiar the way an unsheathed tube of lipstick is to a lady, familiar in how a butcher hands his son the knife and tells him to slice — but there is no safety in a cubic world. This is not anything real, nothing but a fantasy of companionship that's been enabled by digital modification and mechanical error. It's that fact which powers me to aim and shoot without dallying for a single tick.
Did I want to aim for the leg, when I shot that captain-king down? Did the crosshair of my gun go down the waist to the hip then the ankle, like the way a man's gaze evaluates a body for patterns of gender conformity, identity? Was it just a mistake attributed to nervous tick that made my arm rise the bullet's trajectory higher, higher, to the lying mouth of that pirate? Was it my anger that pushed down the trigger?
That pirate I'll label the first casualty of my anger. The first body to my count. For what could not be physical, I've made instead digital, a matter of pixels on a screen, pre-recorded SFXs of pain and redstone trails of blood left in my maturing. It can be described as shameful, that the only outlet I've found for this inexpressible rage is through tormenting a computer virus and its home server. But there remains no one to judge, is there?
Mason does not count; the seal of confessional, whilst being a part of a church neither of us have thought of in recent times, has already been placed over his lips through premature pinky promises. I do not fear his judgement; I do not fear my childhood of wayward camp and gun safeties. That courage does not extend to sisters' makeup.
The make-up of my sisters was cakey, foundation more like fondant, costume play rather than cosmetic transformation; I heard how they laughed with my eyes closed, scratchy brush of glittery eyeshadow itchy, sparkly paint unflattering when I opened my eyes. The bathroom mirror was a taunting combatant as the faucet spilled into the sink, the ugly splotches of color taking too long to come off. They tried to lie to me behind the bathroom door, raised their voices over the rush of water, to mesmerize me with the idea of glamor, beauty, illusions undercut by the giggles that toned their voices at the very concept. Ugliness is too easy to find in what sisters call beauty.
I think of them; Ana, Phoebe, as I brush a curl of Moe's hair back behind her ear, patting her face down again with the white brush of foundation to act as a canvas for her blush and lipstick and clownery. She smiles at me as I do so, honks once when I accidentally pause for a moment too long, taking in the mess of powder that I've splattered against her face and cringing, reminds me to continue helping her. Her blush is a bold redstone red, turns into a lighter, gentler pink when I dap the already pale brush into the palette.
Squinting, I try and make sure it's fine, that it's satisfactory when Moe will look into the mirror, that it will be different than when my sisters made me open my eyes and look at the chaos of blush and eyeshadow and foundation that meshed together to make a face too wrong to be mine. And at my efforts, she honks lightly, eyes crinkling at the glass reflection of the window, looking back at me with a happiness that has me letting go of a exhale I didn't know I was even holding. Moving the mouse to look at her fully, pushing volume key higher, to hear her better, I try not to think about the physicality of this scene as she jumps up and down in place, happy with the result.
Was I happy when I was a child? My childhood of gun safety, paralyzing fear, chalky makeup, and running down the grass with Mason. I suppose I was pleased with it, content with my memory of it enough to be sick when away from it, in a camp I needed in order to be stronger, and enough to want it back when I came home and found it changed over the years, nearly two, I'd spent away. Was that happiness then? Euphoria?
In the dark room of my college dorm, blinds shut and door locked, with the only light coming from a computer that whirrs and whines its fans when I say I'm to go, with only the virus domesticated into an entity as company, I fear I cannot say.
My room smelled like flowers when I came home and brought that computer home. Sweet, fragrant smell, from the dorm besides mine's new perfumed occupant, from the new cleaning product wafting through the hall outside my door; I never did find out where it came from. I was too busy with my own things, my own business, setting up the new laptop and getting it familiarized with myself and my own aesthetics.
Minecraft downloaded slowly for a laptop that was promised to be only 'gently used'. But there was not much for me to do but wait, and I chose to instead to poke around my online papers and log into my student portal as it loaded in the background, a soft rumbling signalling the fans' whirring. I told myself I would clean up the digital storage later, after. I deserved to have some fun of my own after that long day at the market, didn't I? Especially after gutting fish and grabbing sharp urchins with in that cold local sea. Opening the Minecraft launcher, I told myself I did.
The gun mod, the Doctor Who mod, they were intriguing, they were interesting, compatiable; in the way a date fits together, small talk and the barest edges of intimacy, man expected to pay, so they were installed onto server. It took me some time to be familarized with the cubic models of rifle; the AK-47, StG 44, M16, etc, trials of misfirings and accidental discharges, rows upon rows of misintended death messages of my own user. Don't think it was out of any lack of knowledge now, however. These errors were nothing but an inability to adapt to cubic models and mouse and arrow clickings. I'm not an irresponsible gun owner. Not at all; boot camp, military, it's taught me more than enough to be wary of dropping weapon, to dislodge safety mechanism, to fire freely.
There is no warning shot. In that blocky lagging world, I found I could lose inhibition. Especially when it came to that monster invading it.
It is a horrible ARG entity. To haunt, to scare, there needs an air of suspense, of strangeness, something in the air that's unable to put to word. This starkness is an embarassment to any ARG protagonist, and it shames me and my own wasted victimhood. From dirty lumbering forest, to home of humble wooden planks, cast in an obscured moonlight, I was watched.
Surveillence is something I've hated for a long time. A man hates the feeling of eyes, to be judged and demeaned weak; feminine, and a woman hates the stares for the statistics of victims who've come before her, the groping surveying from someone across a bar, evaluated and weighed on physicalities alone. I've found that I hate it from those ways too.
What exactly it wants from me is none of my concern. Curiousity, vitality, fear; it's not my business. I'm not a good victim anyway. It's web is no inviting thing, the mysteries it crafts like a junior high's attempt at a haunted house, with visible brush strokes and hastily scrubbed away sketch, and I suppose I am worse than a fly, with my tactless nature that has me chasing it from high to low.
I would be a horrible ARG protagonist and it is a horrible ARG entity. It's what makes us amicable with each other when I've run out of ammo and it's forgotten its supernaturalities. Head next head, body next to body, like two girls lying arm to arm at a sleepover, all alone in the deep night of nine PM that's so late to their immature brains.
Like a girl. Oh, how I hate the phrase. Across from me, in padded black recording room, it laughs its low distortion laugh, invisible non-existent head thrown back onto its chair. The taunt, the emasculation, the reminder of the early immaturity of mine mixes together to make a cocktail of shame that boils at the bottom of my gut.
Like a girl? High pitched, cracking voice, emotional and weak; in the creaking bed of mine — cheap bare mattress, only thing good about it its durability, the talent belonging more so in a brothel — I shift and turn, mull over the mindless remark. It doesn't matter. The border of femininity looked so far away from where I was standing. Was it really so close? Was I really just upon the cusp of that border of what they call masculinity, on the threshold of what they demean as softness?
Womanhood?
The webpage is stark when I pull it up, go to type in the empty search bar. Carefully, for an audience who I must satisfy, I type in my words, cringe and grimace, imagine having them recited out and humilated in front of friend and family. I almost shut the computer then and there. At least there is no real witness to this scene.
Where it is, I do not wonder; I've blocked it off from as many avenues that I was able to manage, disabled its tracking and spyware with rapid frantic clicks, fuelled by a paranoia that embarasses me to admit. I navigate the search results, skim past the AI overview I don't need nor want, go down and press the blue eager link.
The online page is a labyrinth of pop-up ads that I manuver mouse to click the ever-evading x, catalog preview pictures that instill discomfort and tighten my throat; the models look so different, clean and perfect in a way that others and distincts me aside from their intended customer-base. My eyes dart around the site, ready to move on from this nightmare of a Victoria's Secret offical site.
My mouse scatters around the screen, fidgets on the options — why do they have to be so many? — before I close my eyes and settle on the square labelled as "Push-up". The screen reloads in the corner of my eye. I'm not scared. I shouldn't be at all, not of some webpage, frilled with pink and laced with commerical charms, but as I look at the preview screen, at the model with the perfect lighting and shining smile, I've never felt so worse.
What would this be like if I decided to get out of this room and go up to a store outside for this? The thought worms its way through for only a moment before I'm dropping my head into my hands trying to get rid of it. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. But—
The button Add to Bag is a light pink. I think I'd rather die than do in-store pick up. I'll go through the mortifying ordeal of shipping right to me instead, make myself face that delivery package in the building of my college dorm instead. Nobody knows me. Nobody would care; and if they did, then I could pass it off as a gift to a lie of a girlfriend, for a social life I don't have. Yeah.
I wait for the confirmation page to load slowly, knowing of how laggy my computer is. In the darkness of my room, all alone, I find myself and my shame to be illuminated by the smiling happy models, their softness and beauty and perfect lighting.
The laptop closes with a loud thud.
The work day ends in seawater and a disgusting fish smell. Trudging through college dorm hall, I walk through, careful to avoid bumping into anyone, holding my jacket close with the package. Black box, striped with white and pink on two sides, label boxed in, so stark, too obvious. It's as if I'm on trial.
I fumble with my keys. From the front pockets to the inside, then comes the task of fitting it into the keyhole while balancing the package. Is anyone here? Are they looking, are they judging the box I have, do they recognize it? Do they see the contrast between me and the clothes inside, the tough hands that hold the key to slot it in and twist open the door, opening it to a room too barren to have gender attached to it, too barren to be anything but a default man's? From the bottom of my heart, I hope they don't.
On my desk, my computer remains where it is. Opened, plugged in, online. It had complained of how much I was depriving it, of my 'neglect' and supposed hatred of it that was evident from this lack of simulation. I don't know where it is now, if it is dormant or just in wait; no words have been formed nor heard from the computer speakers as I toe off my work shoes, beaten soles hitting wall on their way to floor, peeling off to throw jacket onto chair, and I haven't the nerve to call for it.
I'm not a wife who's too needy to wait for her spouse's response, a girlfriend who nags and blows up her partner's phone for one response or even a Seen mark on a digital I love you. Because I can't be.
My undershirt is sweaty as I pull off my t-shirt, drop it onto the floor. I grimace at its feeling before rushing to get it off too, the box set beside the door an accusation. Do I want to go to it, pick it up from the floor and unravel the pretty bow that ties together that unwise purchase of mine?
The ribbon is transparent scratchy material. Opening the box, I go through the boxes inside, reach the inside, feel like a thief, before pulling out the bra without any fanfare. It's a plain black; I hadn't bothered with figuring out complimentary shades against my skin, to think of anything but mechanical motions of click and type for fear of losing my nerve if I didn't. It's padded too, if only slightly. The bra, I mean.
My room is too dark to see much though. I turn to my computer, swipe finger against the trackpad, get it back online and lit up. The light illuminates, incriminates the scene in my room. I move to the camera installation, open it to see better what the bra will look like against my chest. The metal of its fastenings is cold as I fumble with it, copy the scenes I've seen in movies where the actress flawlessly, effortlessly hooks and unhooks her bra before a cut to black, in front of an audience that admires her, her body, herself. My try comes out to be a cheap imitation.
I don't look to the screen, to the camera preview pop-up, not until I've laid myself onto my chair in front of it, calmed myself and prepared for the worst. My expression on the screen is grainy, badly lit, as it deepens into a cringing frown at the ugliness in front of me. My eyes blur, and I blink it away, breathing in.
"Fuck," I murmur, the curse muffled by how my hands cover my face, hide it away from that attacker of a reflection. It's too fake. I can see how the padding builds up a pretense of breast muscle easily, how it clashes against the structure of my face, my neck, my shoulders, everything that's apart of myself. It's not me, won't ever be.
If someone was looking at me right now, evaluating the silhouette of my figure, they'd easily discern the artificiality behind that swell and curve. They would know what I really was.
Wiping my face because of sweat alone, nothing else, with one hand, my other raises to shut the computer just as quick as I've opened it, fingers on the top, thumb caressing the smooth lenses of the camera, before—
"Ze?"
In camp, I learned not to hesitate. To not wait and discern a sergeant's orders from reason to irrationality; to obey as quick as my body could move, then faster than that, better than that metric. Perhaps I will attribute that way of pleasing I've gained from that. It's rough and snappy and snark, but I still raised my gun to help that wizard, but I still went down into that door, but I still can't turn away and say I'm not going down there when faced with obligation.
There's reasons why I couldn't be a good husband; the papers, the business, the intimacy, and there's reasons why I can't be a good wife; the house, the domesticity, the masculinity I can't seem to shake. The aforementioned is one of them. A wife's nagging is different from my complaining, more like peals than the clashing gong, quieter, sharper, when I'm too abrasive to even try the latters.
After that day with the camera and the box, it hasn't mentioned it. The bra is not in the box I label as my dresser, the packaging it came in long discarded, only trace the ribbon I'd lost soon after. I don't mention it. I never will, if it comes to it.
I used to base myself on the rubric of a soldier. On the quickness of which I could aim then shoot, how far I could throw a grenade across a field, how long and fast I could run miles, how easily I could bring myself to kill. Now, I find that the template of my identity has shifted, taken a spin into something fantasical, out of video tapes and blurry footage.
The fish are wriggling in the river. So fast, slick and brown and grey bodies swimming through the blue water. They aren't real; my gun escapes from its holster to rise towards the animals. It's easier than fishing. It'll help my hand-eye coordination.
Where it or Moe is, I don't know. They've wandered down, further away, to the sandy banks where they draw line in and bring the fish with lures and bait. Driven away by the unnecessary violence, I think, frowning at the idea. I take another shot into the cold waves to distract myself. There is no muffler, so my ears ring from my computer's output sounds, so there is no flinch when the gun fires and bangs into splashing creek.
<Michaamazing2> I'm heading out for the night
<Michaamazing2> Have fun fishing Moe
My chair spins a little when I push it away from my desk, breathing out. Minecraft loads its closing screen, before I reach out and exit the tab entirely, exhausted by the very idea of staying on that world one tick longer. My head rests onto the top of my chair, hair against my neck from where I've neglected it, and in the corner of my eye, there lies it, placed on the side of my bedframe, the bra.
Remembering it's there has me closing my eyes with a grimace. An overreaction, as I raise a hand, drag it over my face and sigh into my palm. I should have returned it, made up for the waste of money it was, but I couldn't bring myself to go back to the page, and I couldn't bring myself to let it rot at the bottom of a cardboard box forever. Why I left it on my bed, I don't know. It only serves to try and tempt me into putting it on again.
When my hand leaves my face, dropping to the armrest on the left of me, the bra is still there; of course. I turn my head and chair fully to the bed, try to focus my screen tired eyes on it, to remember what exactly is causing me this stress. A humilation ritual is what it is. How weak am I, to be bending to the nonexistent whims of an inanimate object?
The floor is cold as I stand up; I've never bothered with heating, and walk over to my bed. I don't let myself think as I reach down, pick it up by the black strap. It's smooth fabric, like it was before, and it's a nice material at that. I consider it again.
The metal hooks are still as difficult as they were before to handle. A few moments are taken to fumble with them, and I'm nearing frustration when they finally latch onto one another with neat clicks. This time, I don't make the mistake of immediately looking. Forearm raises to cover just below my collarbone, as if there's any cleavage to hide, and I try and focus instead on how surprisingly nice the bra feels. Not nice like a connection between a classmate, or a perfect shot, or a pat on the back by a father. More so nice in the way a compliment from a passerby on the street is; a comment on your hair, a t-shirt, your jeans, something unnoticable until it's been recognized.
When I remove my arm from my collarbone, I try to ignore the creeping feeling of discomfort as I move back into my chair. My hands find a strap on my shoulder, fiddle with it as I think and think. The thoughts almost let me ignore—
"Yo, Ze, why'd you leave?"
I find the computer's open when I snap my head back, chair spinning slightly with; I forgot to close it then. My inhale is shallow, quick, as my shoulders lower, untensing.
"I just needed to do something man," I lie, looking anywhere but the screen. The tape is still on my camera, I remind myself. "It's nothing."
"Okay man," it says, soundly unentirely unconvinced. A grimace crosses my lips at its tone, at its words even, but it doesn't matter. I just hum back, breathing out quietly.
The period of silence that comes between us dances on the line of awkwardness and comfortability. It lets me think at the very least, as the computer hums its quiet tune in the background.
At the bottom of my screen, it shows me several minutes have gone ahead, gives me the time of how long the silence lasts.
"Did you return it?" it asks. It's— the question is almost quiet. It startles me regardless, but it's hesitant in a way.
"Return what?" I ask dumbly, before the memory of that day comes back to me. It was there, the shame reminds me.
But there's surprisingly no taunt on my forgetfulness. "Your thing; your, uh, bra?"
Its tone brings out a smothered snort of laughter from me. My thing, I repeat to myself amused, before the question reminds itself to me and my smile dies. I bite my cheek, thinking of a response.
"I didn't," is all I give after nearly a minute. I mull over the optics of adding I'm wearing it right now to the statement. Would it want to see if I said that? Would I want that?
There's an uptick in the computer's fans' whirring in the background. "Really?" it asks, pausing before it adds, quieter than it already was, "Did you want to?"
My head sways from side to side before I can think; the word "No" tumbles from my lips faster than I can think, more sure than I thought was possible.
But if it notices, it doesn't comment on it. "Good," it whispers after a moment of what seems to be hesitance now that I look back. "You looked nice."
Would you think that I looked nice now? "Thanks," I murmur, raising a hand to the top of the screen. The tape leaves behind a trail of adhesive I wince at as it comes off. But that isn't the point.
I know that it has some control over my computer, on its screens and pop-ups and desktops, so I watch the cursor move to the camera app, pause on the icon.
"Ze, can I—?"
"Yeah."
The light of the camera is miniscule, bright. I stare at that instead of the screen, trying not to pay attention to the places the padding and my chest gape and don't meet, readjusting the bra straps as subtly as I can.
There's silence from it for a few moments; I can watch it shift into the recording mode as it goes on, try not to pay attention to it in fear of losing my nerve if I do.
"So?" I prompt, looking away, reflexively raising my forearm over my chest before dragging it back down, setting it underneath the bra's weight instead.
"You look pretty," it says, one of the first regular volumed words it's uttered in this moment. It repeats the statement, before beckoning me to look back at the camera, saying something about photography and scenes I don't dwell on.
The camera shifts from video to pictures from its motions, and I watch the images go to the corner of the pop-up in the corner of my eye. A folder, it murmurs, when I ask where exactly it's planning to store them; there's no way I'm keeping them in my regular photos album. As one would store images of an illict girlfriend, I think mindlessly, and I ignore the feeling that arises at the thought, of the implications behind it.
After that night, the bra finds itself a dedicated place in my dresser.
Twilight Evbo turned Red Evbo and his thoughts on Parkour Civilization Evbo, snippet underneath the cut.
A saint must go through tribulations. I know it, you know it, and so does He. A perfect Evbo cannot be created without strife.
The darkened twilight, that forest, that dimension He had me travel to, I had thought it was enough, and I was—
An Evbo can be wrong. He is more often wrong than he is right. I know; I’ve tested out and evaluated the statistics myself. And I was wrong. It wasn’t enough. That failure was expected of me.
Subpar products go through evaluation to be discarded. A cell goes through the cell cycle and goes through apoptosis if it is cancerous, if it is broken beyond repair. If an Evbo fails my tests, he doesn’t perform well, then he will be deleted. There is no second chance. There is no moment of realization. There is no unfairness, because He was not unfair when it came to me.
I subjected myself to His tests. I was not rebellious, I did not gash nor bite nor squirm. When He used my voice to speak, I did not tear my vocal cords out. When He used my eyes to look upon the dangers He would subject me to, I did not dare cry. Why would I? A perfect Evbo is not unemotional, but he is not weak. I had emotion, too much I found.
I hated the other Evbos. The air was frigid and cold, the clouds dampening my shoes, I hated the other Evbos and the castle they lived in. Hungry, freezing, and in too much pain to remember, I wanted to go home; but there was nothing else to go to, was there?
He counted the days for me; I was too desolate and was too insentient at the time to do so myself. I didn’t bother counting any, not until day 36, day 37, day 38, or day 39. He left me. I thought he left me for good. Was I happy? It remains hard for me to say. I only gained sentience beyond those days alone. I was happy in the way a creator finishes a video that He has agonized over for months. I was delighted in the way a saint is when they are allowed to die and go to Heaven. I was pained in the way an animal suffers after refusing a human’s treatment.
[line break]
A flaw of his is to be tunnel vision. It is a staple of Evbos, and I intend to use it to my advantage; even have it written squarely in the margins of the script page, right next to his name in the character list, sprawled in red ink from a pen that always disobeys me. I’ve yet to wash out all the ink that came from its untimely explosion a few days ago. It’s unfortunate, for it gets everywhere, but I hardly have much time to worry myself about it. My work gloves are enough to fix the problem anyway.
Parkour Civilization as a simulation, as a series, as an Evbo’s test is not majorly unique. It’s major selling point is that it is not a one-off. I’d intended it to be different from, I wanted it to be special, for it to be good. I needed something different, to stave off the burn-out, sick and tired of posting videos that bored me and my audiences; a Skyblock world that is unable to ever grow, a world with a rulebook that contradicts itself. I ask you, would you want to go through that horrid script-writing loop? Would you want to be editing a video and midway through realize that it won’t be the thing that pushes you to perfection? Please, forgive me of growing tired of it. I ask for sympathy, not empathy.
But, I will admit, Parkour Civilization is hardly an improvement. This Evbo is frustrating to me, and do I not hate but loathe him. He knows not even his favorite friend’s name.
And it is my fault and my hand that wrote him this way, that is true, but indulge me in this personification. Yes, you can argue that it’s his fault for never asking, as much as it is their fault for never telling, but there’s not much he can do now, can he? There does still lie the issue, the conflict, on whether or not he is able to find them once again. He must prove his fidelity to them and to me. Find a player without a name, without a user, without anything but the color of their shoes and the melody of their voice.
He is loyal from how he follows. But it is not enough. It will never be enough if I have my way. His friend, mine when the transfer goes through, is nothing more than a cardboard cut out of a player. A stock character, a macguffin, a motivation, a stepping stool that he grew attached to like you would an inanimate object. They have no name for him to know.
You can sympathize him for this fate. I know you will, I hate you for it, but there is nothing I can do about it. It serves me best for you to anyway. If he is the best Evbo, if he is perfect, then I will hate him enough to become him. At least now I will repossess his friend.
I admit. I regret the addition of that friend, of that NPC. That shadow of his, I do not value it as he does, like another shiny totem or his sparkling diamond boots. I will hate this Evbo’s memories the most.
It’s been already written that they will live. I need them to, for this Evbo’s sake, for the plot, for the audience satisfaction, and for me. I don’t care especially about the mechanics behind their departure, the logistics behind their survival; I care for none of it except how they will look in diamond boots. They will be Champion of that simulation while that Evbo is God.
The finale is already written. There is no setting the train off course, there is no draft where Evbo dies at Clown’s feet, there is no concept where Seawatt wins and he is defeated. No matter how I long for that impossibility. I wish so dearly, so immaturely, so jealously, that I let myself scrap the idea of Parkour Civilization when I first thought of it.
But my ego is not worth more than my Creator’s approval.
