It was an easy manner, to sit in front of your screen and pull out the deck and access the information centre of the world, right at your fingertips. You know this place, you live and breath in it since you've learned how to read, and more so soon after, when you learned how to enter the cyberspace. Thousand upon thousands of bytes lurch into your mind, and you rearrange them with ease. Visuals here and numbers there and everything else in between. Within seconds you find what you're looking for, within minutes you've compromised a gate, found a string of information you weren't supposed to know, but you do now. Easiest job you've ever had? Well, at this point almost everything is. You know how everything work, and few else does.
When you jack out, it was as effortlessly as when you came in, the unread information streaming back to their place. Your mind takes only a second to put everything as it were, and just like that, you're sitting in your small room with a gigabyte more in your head, and enough space for it and a whole lot more. You know how this works. You know how to handle it.
There's a problem, however. Cyberspace can satisfy nearly all your needs, but physical energy is not once of them. You glance at your table and see it empty. You stands up, and the physical stress is immense. Thankfully it only lasts a second until you reseat yourself at the wheelchair nearby. Your arms are strong. Before you can uplink your brain, you typed on your keyboard, as everybody else does, and somehow you can't let go of the habit. Rewiring the wheels were an effort, but not by much.
You roll out of the room, to the living room, to the dining table. A note is stapled on the notice board. Your housekeeper is out for the day. Of course, you should've remembered. Her sister is getting married, she's attending. Of course. You briefly wondered why you weren't invited, but thought it silly. Silly, silly, silly, you wouldn't survive out there.
But going out there is what you should be doing right now. Your stomach churns. Human beings can't live long without sustenance, without nutrients. Even with what little augmentations we have now, there still isn't enough. You sigh. What else to do? You roll yourself out the door, trying to find the location of the nearest food place, what do they call it, restaurant?, in your mind. Carefully, you find your way out.
People. Of course there'll be people out there. Not everyone are like you, hunched with your deck, exploring the cyberspace. You were learning the identities of these people, shifting through their data; it'd make sense if they also exist in meatspace. Don't you exist in meatspace also? You roll, you try to ignore them as they talk and chatters, and they click or step or clack through the glassy floors, each footstep a sign of their gait and stature, each mutter a piece of information that you're missing. So many information, so little way to take them in. Your head hurts, as if your neurons are hard at work creating space for data that will not fill it because you have no way of retrieving them. Not from meatspace, no. You roll your wheelchair faster.
Eating place. A table, a plate of bread and assorted fillings you've chosen out of the digital menu. You sit near the window, because the other choices are at the centre of the room, surrounded by people, data you can't retrieve. You eat your sandwich in relative silence, the stereo playing a song that you recognize as a classical, from the nineteenth century, a long time ago. It bothers you, just a bit, at how little that you're receiving. The taste of the sandwich, and how it feels to have it sliding down your throat. Your ears are catching the music, and a smattering of conversations you can barely make out from the other guests. And you're looking at the empty chair in front of you. Not to the window, no. Not to the landscape that expand below you: a deep blue sky like a dome over, trees below, younger than you are, but fiercer, somehow, like they believe they've and will outlive you. Children playing, throwing things, receiving them and throwing them again. Children, whose mind, if you can admit, are stronger than yours. At the very least they aren't bothered by all the space, or lack thereof. Their senses aren't yet wide enough to receive it all.
You eat, until you perceive that you are full, and find your way back.
When my mind is a tangled mess (which has been happening far more often than I'm liking), this sort of schizophrenic narrative is all that it can farts out.
It was the second day in the row that he saw the woman on the field. From afar, she looked like any other lady, albeit one who was wearing an strange, almost menacing dress. It was black, and its skirt had a dusty white embroidery that looked almost like spider webs. The dress billowed with the grasses and the wind, but she paid them no mind. She was busy, as he had only found out after stopping and watching her, out of curiosity, for a little while. She was talking to the birds.
There were sparrows and pigeons and other little birds whose name he had never quite memorised. They flew by and they'd dive to her side and circled around her head as she spoke to them. They'd flew away after a while with what he imagined to be a clearer creed.
On the second day that he stopped by to watch her, she noticed him standing with bicycle and gestured at him with a look that wasn't unkind, but impossible to refuse. He put his bike down on the grass and walked closer, quite beside himself.
From up close she didn't look as ordinary as she had from afar. There were rings on all her left hand's fingers. None of them were the same, but they all looked like they were made of skeletons. She wore earrings made of breast feathers and her eyes were piercing like an eagle on its prey.
He asked her, despite his sudden fear, of what she was doing on the field. She told him, quite casually, that she was teaching the birds how to find the door to another world.
---
I was using a random prompt generator with my sis where she drew and I wrote whatever came out of it. I think this was for “A teacher with rings/earrings, and a bird” but I got kind of overboard with the lore. Didja notice how I kind of shove in the rings descriptions because I was running out of time?
Found this in my cupboard, dated December of 2015.Might as well shoe it in here.
---
There was no sound left in the building, except for the screeching of rats hidden behind the wall or the yowling of cats outside as they step from one ceiling to another, chasing after another. When Erika took a wrong step, the wood under her feet creaked and she could feel the whole building shuddering for a second before settling back to its silence. At intervals, she could hear the wind tugging the broken windows, little drops of water from who-know-where, the faraway noises of the people who are still awake in the city. There are always people still awake in the city.
So it wasn't entirely silent after all. She took one careful step after another, steadied her foothold, counted out her steps. One two *creak*. Back. Two three four ....
A gecko climbed out from a crack in the wall, wordlessly it crawled across the room. A fly flew in from the broken window, a slight buzz that passed by Erika's ear. A quick yowl and there was a cat right outside the window, climbing pipes and the ornaments on the wall to the top of a broken air fan just outside. Erika stared at the cat, still standing on one leg as she practised her steps. Its eyes glowed like tiny moonlight.
Another step. No creak. No sound. The fly had went away, and the gecko was still. The cat's tail swished, but it made no noise, nothing she could hear. The wind rustled her ear.
She took another steps, more steps. She became more determined with each step, with each passing thoughts. She made a quick jump, a silent, wordless hop. The window opened on her first try. She didn't think they'd leave it unlocked so. The cat jumped up and out of her sight.
Erika took a deep breath. She looked down to the ground three floors below and prepared herself for the climb.
He had the letter in his hand, he had the stubbed train ticket in his pocket. Night air in a new city. He took a deep breath, started to appreciate the faint smell of smoke and questionable liqueurs before he could discern them. Oh yes, he'll like it here. The big city, right where he belonged.
He took the steps down the platform, not small tentative steps, but practically flying down it and out the station. It was late, and what few people were there didn't seem to mind him, or perhaps too tired to contemplate what they saw. A teenager, barely an adult, wearing a long coat and carrying a broom and a bag filled with jars. What they didn't see was the ghost hovering on the boy's shoulder, silent and solemn, but still very much concerned.
He'd tell the boy to slow down lest he'll lose his footing, but he also knew the boy wouldn't hear him, also that the boy was nimble enough that he wouldn't. Practically the only reason he'll have to say it was because he was running out of things to say, needed something to start off the conversation. It's a big city. It has too many opportunities for a budding monster hunter like the boy. The ghost was terrified of it, of what it could bring, but he knew the boy was wild and optimistic and clever enough to give him a retort should he complain.
The boy stopped on his tracks when he was out the station, smelling the hinterland. It was late at night, and still there were cars pouring through the streets, lights blinking no mater where you look. Streetlights blazing, blinding. And people, even. The sort who took to the night air like most take to sunlight. The boy took out the piece of paper with the address on it, glanced at the expanse around him, put the paper back inside his pocket and began to walk in a direction as if he was sure of it.
"Do you know where you're going, Marion?" the ghost asked tentatively.
"Nope," the boy said, cheerfully. "But I got the address. Figure there'll be a map somewhere."
"I'm not so sure about that-"
"There it is."
A bus stop, a short walk from the small station. Benches, awning, and a map of the city at the back of it. One problem: it was unlabelled, a fact that the ghost quickly pointed out to the boy.
"You can't read it without knowing what the streets are called."
"Feh, easy." The boy took out the paper again, examined it. He took something from his bag, a flick of something liquid from one of his jars, and smeared a dot on the paper. Eager to show off his skills, the tapped the paper and the map, both to the same beat.
One second, nothing happened.
"Marion? Do you know what you're-"
"Yes, shush."
Five seconds, the map alighted. The little dots on it, at first a sign of stations, now showed multiple unearthly symbols. One in particular shone brightly.
"There it is," Marion said, proudly.
The ghost was less than sure, although he couldn't say he wasn't equally proud. "Are you sure?"
"Let's find out, then."
--
It is way past the time of the night when I’m sober enough to make sense of things, but I hardly ever feel content these days and right now I feel pretty okay. Figure I have to celebrate it by writing some nonsense and then I can get to bed without feeling like I’ve squandered it.
The first thing Allan saw when he opened his eye was a corpse. A dead
man (woman?) with her face torn down by the fishes and long hair
drenched in seaweed, looking down at him with something like pity and
curiosity in her eyeball. Eyeball, singular, as the other one was simply an eyesocket, which was looking at nothing at all.
Allan wanted to scream, but the voice was stuck in his throat. He
coughed and spewed out water and only then did he realised he was wet,
drenched in salt water, and that he was lying on wooden planks which
swayed slightly to the gentle waves. He opened his eyes again, to see
the corpse again, to make sure she was real, but then he saw a whole lot more.
There was a skeleton next to the corpse, wearing a hat and a fine but
tattered jacket he'd seen admirals wear. On his hips there was a belt, and on the belt was a sword, and none of those things, belt and sword
and his entire skeleton body to boot, seemed to be supported by any
standard law of physics. The skeleton smiled at him, when he noticed
that Allan was looking at him. He lifted his hat as if in greeting.
---
Found this in my journal dated February 1 of this year. Its' what I call a garbagefic, a fic that's mostly just me describing things/being dramatic/"what is even a plot" for the hell of it. This seems pretty okay though.
