Narrator: Seth

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I woke up and went straight to my screens.  David and Marco were still sleeping on the floor of that closet. It was too dark to see if Marco was still a little kid or not.

I switched on another screen. Artemis was still at Reggie’s place. Currently they were both asleep in her bed.   I activated a third screen. Andrew and Jack were still asleep in that weird hallway. 

Was everyone still sleeping?

I needed to tell Reggie that Jack escaped from Marcy’s room. Of course, I still couldn’t make my door go to his current location.  It still just opened on horrifying static. Maybe I should figure out how to get to him before I told Reggie anything. She was.. not handling things very well.

On the other hand, any news about Jack might make her feel better. 

Not that it mattered right this second because she was still sleeping. 

With a heavy sigh I went to my kitchen. I opened a bottled coffee from the fridge and drank it while staring vacantly at my food.  Nothing seemed interesting. 

I was bored. 

I went to my computer room and sighed as I flopped into my chair. There was something else I could be working on, but it was *hard* and I didn’t want to. I’d been tryin for a while now to get a feed from the Core. If I could see Outside then I’d have access to a whole other level of information. I’d be able to accurately track time!  But I was stuck. Everything I tried was a dead end. 

So currently, working on this project entailed sitting and staring and trying to come up with another idea. A better idea.  

This was easier to do with Reggie around. I liked having her to bounce ideas off of. Sometimes I didn’t even need her to respond. The act of explaining my problem often led me to my answer.. but it wasn’t the same to just talk into the air. 

For some reason it mattered that someone was there to hear it. The process needed a witness. I couldn’t ask my boyfriend to do it. The moment I shattered his belief in this world he would go poof and reboot somewhere with no memory of the event. It seemed like it shouldn’t be so easy to destabilize him, but this wasn’t really him. This was a memory. An NPC built out of memories. That’s all he was. 

I know it seems odd that I’d buy into the whole past life thing. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call spiritual. But my memories felt real. Something in the back of my mind clicked when Reggie brought it up, and the paradigm just *fit*. If nothing else it provided a convenient language to describe the experience.  

My computer pinged at me, and I clicked the alert message that popped up on the screen. Marco’s feed appeared. 

His room had rearranged itself. Where the couch had been was now a kitchen.  Marco was cooking something. Looked like scrambled eggs and sausage.  He was an adult again, and he glanced towards the closet pretty frequently. I assumed he was waiting for David to wake up. 

By the time David stirred Marco was leaned against the counter eating  out of the pan. “Mornin’ sunshine,” he said when David came squinting into the light. “I made breakfast.”

David looked like hell.  He gripped his belly and didn’t stand up straight. “I’m not really in a food place, right now.”

Marco snapped his fingers and a door appeared in the wall next to David.  David peeked inside, then gave Marco a dark look. 

It was a bathroom. 

Marco shrugged a little and went back to picking eggs out of the pan. David watched him for a moment then disappeared into the room. He was gone for an almost concerning amount of time. When he shuffled back out Marco was laying down on one of the more moss covered stones. He sat up when the door opened. 

“How you feelin’?” Marco asked. 

“Like shit,” David answered. 

Marco sat on the edge of the stone and beckoned David to come closer.  David approached and stooped a little to look at Marco. Marco reached for him and touched his forehead to David’s. 

“Are you sick right now because I’m a handful?” Marco murmured. 

“You’re not a handful.”

“You know what I mean,” Marco pressed. “I had a fuckin’ meltdown, and you had to come fuckin’ hold me together, and now you’re fuckin’ sick.”

“You know, you’d come off less angry if you cut back on your use of the word ‘fuck’,” David said. 

“Don’t change the fuckin’ subject!” Marco said with a grin. 

“Ok fine,” David said, and he put his hands on Marco’s shoulders. “It’s possible that emotional distress has irritated my condition, but—“

“I’m sorry, David—“

“*But* I don’t want you to apologize for having feelings!” David raised his voice when Marco interrupted him. Marco looked down to hide a smile. “It’s just the cost of doing business, Marco. Everyone has feelings. If it wasn’t worth the trouble I’d just stay home and be a hermit.”

“Ok but I don’t.. like... wanna hurt you.” Marco said so quietly I almost didn’t hear it. 

“Listen, Marco, I’ve been sitting on something for a little while that seemed like it didn’t need to be said aloud, because I can sense that it’s mutual and you don’t always like it when I ‘say words’. But I’m going to say it because I think maybe *you* can’t tell that it’s mutual, and that’s just silly.” David paused. “Marco, I love you.” Marco looked down again, and David touched his face to make him look back up. “I’m serious,” he said. 

“I know!”  Marco laughed a little. “It’s just weird.”

“You have a startling amount of confidence for someone with so little self-worth,” David said with a smile. “I don’t believe there’s anything you could do that would hurt so much that I’d stop loving you.”

Marco looked down again. He seemed uncomfortable. His hands were fidgeting in his lap. 

“You don’t have to say anything,” David said. “I already know how you feel.”

“Yeah,” Marco said, “about that..”

“I should have told you.”

“I knew you were an empath,” Marco said, “I just didn’t think that meant.. I shoulda’ figured it out though. You always distract me when it starts getting real dark.”

“Seems like the polite thing to do.”

“Well I fuckin’ appreciate it,” Marco murmured and leaned forward to kiss David.  David inhaled and appeared to swell. He touched Marco’s face and sank his fingers into his hair—

“Aaand they’re just gonna fuck again. Nothing important here.”  I closed the window and went back out to my living room. I shut off the screen they were on, and looked at the other two. 

Andrew and Jack were still asleep, but Reggie and Artemis were beginning to stir. They stretched and cuddled and murmured to each other. They were too quiet for me to hear what they were saying.  I waited for them to get out of bed and get dressed before I put Reggie’s code into my Everywhere Door. 

“Knock, knock,” I said as I stepped into her apartment. 

Artemis jumped and spun around. Reggie looked up from her coffee maker. 

“Seth!” Reggie smiled wide. “What’re you doing here?”

“I have news regarding Jack.”

Reggie gasped and slapped her hands on the counter. Artemis flinched a little. 

“What is it!?  Spit it out!!” Reggie yelled.  Artemis closed his eyes briefly.  

“He escaped from Marcy’s room. He’s in some kind of weird hallway thing with this kid named Andrew.”

“Andrew?” Reggie said the name like she knew it but didn’t know why. 

“Yea,” I said, “he’s tall, definitely goth, and appears to have some kind of psychotic disorder.”

Reggie gasped again and covered her mouth. 

“What?” I asked.

“Oh my god, *Andrew*,” she almost whispered. “He’s a character we drew sometimes in high school!  He’s *here*!?  Did we create him, or did we remember him?!”

“I think you remembered him.” I said. “The place they’re in right now is weird. There’s all these doors, and they seem to open to memories, and he remembered Marcy after looking at one.  He said he remembered being Outside back when we didn’t have names.”

“Oh my god, how did I not know about him??” Reggie said. 

“Time and space is weird in here. There are whole worlds floating around the Void that we haven’t seen.  I can’t even get to the place Jack is right now. The coordinates just open to static.”

“Shit!” Reggie hit the countertop with the side of her fist, and Artemis quietly placed his hand overtop of hers. 

“Would you please stop doing that,” he whispered to her. 

“Sorry!” She exclaimed, then said again, quieter, “sorry.”

Artemis patted her hand. “S’alright,” He said and turned to get mugs out of the cupboard. He glanced over his shoulder at me and asked, “you want coffee?”

“Don’t bother yourself. I’ve had some.”

“What’re we gonna do?” Reggie asked while Artemis bustled around the kitchen. 

“I can still follow his feed, so I guess we just keep tabs on him until he goes somewhere we can get to.” I said with a shrug. 

“Ok,” Reggie said with a nod. Artemis set a mug of coffee in front of her and she wrapped her fingers around it. “What are we gonna do with him when we find him?”

“Probably just find a place to hide him from Marcy,” I said. “We might have to move him around a lot.  Y’know, because of this fun effect where sometimes thinking about someone here just takes you to them.”

“What if you shield him somehow?” Artemis said as he stirred his coffee. 

“What, like a cloaking device?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “You could.. disrupt his frequency or something. I dunno.”

I rubbed my face while I thought.  That could work. Or something similar. I was silent for a moment before I remembered to say something. “Oh sorry. Yes!  That’s a great idea. Very creative. Thank you.”

Artemis shrugged and moseyed away from the kitchen. “I am nothing if not creative,” he said and dropped into the couch. 

“One second,” Reggie said to me and followed after Artemis. She leaned over the back of the couch to speak with Artemis. Their voices were too low for me to hear, but they kissed briefly before Reggie turned back to me. 

“Ok, let’s go!” She said and bounded for my door. 

“Ok. Bye Arty,” I said as I followed after her. Then I stopped. “Can I call you Arty?  I noticed they call you that sometimes.”

“Yea, it’s fine,” he called over his shoulder. 

Reggie leaned through the door and grabbed the sleeve of my shirt. “He’s not coming, now let’s go!”  She pulled me into my room and shut the door.  I chased after her as she sped through my house and into the living room. 

She gasped at Jack’s screen. 

I switched off Reggie’s feed, which was now just a redundant view of what I was already seeing. 

“Where the fuck are they?” Reggie glared at the screen. 

“Oh. Um. Not sure?”  I frowned at the screen. 

Jack and Andrew were trekking through what looked like a storm made of static. As we watched Andrew appeared to shout something but there was nothing over the wind. They stopped walking. Jack tried to shout something to Andrew, but again we couldn’t hear him. It looked like Andrew couldn’t hear him either.  Then suddenly Andrew turned and held Jack and looked into his eyes. 

“What..?” I breathed. 

“He’s paranoid.” Reggie said.  “There’s something going on brain-wise with him right now. I think the static’s freakin’ him out.”

“It freaks *me* out,” I said and shivered. 

Fucking storm made of static? No thanks. 

Then Jack kissed Andrew, and Reggie scoffed. “Oh my god. Classic Jack.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Was that predictable?  Because it seemed fairly non sequitur.”

“Oh yeah. Jack is... “ Reggie paused. “I’m trying to find a nice way to call him a slut and I can’t think one.”  

“The word your looking for is *promiscuous*,” I said. 

“Yea, he’s that.  Except he catches *feelings* for everyone.”

“Oh, so he’s emotionally promiscuous as well.”  I observed. 

Reggie laughed. 

The boys were walking again. 

“How long do you think this’ll take?” Reggie asked. 

“Honestly it depends if anything noteworthy happens along the way. Time here is weird. Think about the last time you had to walk a long way to get somewhere.”

“Ok,” Reggie said.

“Alright, now try to remember actually walking there. Do you?  Or were you just sort of there eventually?”

“What?  Oh my god.” Reggie’s face went blank for a moment. It was a longer moment than was comfortable for me.  “I only remember when something happened.” She whispered. 

“Exactly,” I said, “and that’s the only thing that shows up on the feed. In here it doesn’t take a long time to go anywhere, it just *feels* like it does.”

“Look!” Reggie was looking at the screen. “It looks like a Seven Eleven or something.”

I studied the screen. “Completely generic. It just says ‘Convenience’.” 

Jack and Andrew went inside, and suddenly they were in the lobby of some sort of hospital.  Reggie poked my shoulder. “Let’s see if we can go there!  Let’s see if we can go there!”

“Ok. Ok!  Dang!” I shrugged away from her and headed to my computer room. She skipped after me.

I sat down in my chair and settled into my desk. I arranged a couple things on my screen, then looked up at Reggie. “You know this might not work, right?”

She nodded. “Yes. Totally. For sure. I understand this might not work.”

“Oh by the way, what’s the nature of your relationship with Artemis?” I asked. 

“You’re gonna ask me that right now?!”

“I am.”

“We’re very close. I spent a lot of time with him in high school, especially senior year when we were depressed and everything sucked. Can you just do the thing now??”  

I sensed Reggie was feeling impatient. 

“Interesting,” I said, “you guys sort of.. glow sometimes when you’re-“

“You said you didn’t watch!!”

“I said I dodn’t watch *recreationally*,” I corrected her. 

“Ok so what does that mean??”

“It means when I’m watching you screw I’m not jerking off.  But listen, one time you guys got all glow-ey and I *think* you guys, like, merged briefly.”

“Wait for real?  How’d we not notice that?”

I shrugged, “I assume because you guys were having an orgasm when it happened.”

“Oh my god, Seth. Can you just do the fuckin’ thing now?”

“Yea. Sure thing.” I said and turned back to my computer.