(GE Copy)

Chapter 10: Of Learning Too Much

“So, what did you see? Clearly you must have seen something. Why hold such a useless thing on such a high pedestal if it did nothing at all? Now, tell me again very seductively, what was it you saw when you took that first bite?”

Purple sky, and pink earth. The vibrant grass illuminated from the tone of the clouds like the golden hue one sees in the summer evenings but these were more curious. Ribonous trees, with thin straightened bark, running creeks without tribulation. Their surface was as straight and as fibrous as the wood on a floor panel. The grass grew all but where he was, tall, vivid viridescent. It took him a few minutes here, simply being, to realize how peaceful it was. A state of inner tranquility, fostered inside him like the growing of cotton inside his vessel. He felt as though it left him, growing out through his skin but his arms were as flesh. The wind was all silent, as much as was like a new sound. Quiet, save the humming of life which radiated around him. No dead fall, nor fallen petal, leaf, or grass. The virgin dirt looked soft as the fields of hay, and the depth of rich nutrients flushed the hue into the soil. But still, was there no dead fall. It glistened in front of him, the perfect rounded sheen of a perfect fruit without pour nor dust, reflecting him reaching out to it though his hands were still. His mind, marvelling at it, while his body lusted the sweet ichor of it’s voluptuous reddened skin.

The wind blew arctic cold, his hair before him, like a tunnel which made further the sight away from his eyes “Again.” He scorn. “Every time I come here, I am damned by this incisive fruit. Whither and die so that I may be rid of you!” Panicking as he did. Remembering the last time he cursed the wills that bound him. He felt himself at the edge of a grave, ready to fall in. The constrictions around his arm became like a vine which wrapped tightly. Trying to remove the anger from himself before it consumed his very being into blackness, but he felt himself give out and curse it anyway. It was not his first time seeing these sights, and figured within whatever dream he was, this fantasy, that he could not be harmed. He felt the latch grip him, spitting out the forgotten name and it was very real. He knew, that his life was in danger. In that moment of weakness the vines grew to reach his shoulders, knowing that it would remove his neck, and pulling away from it back into the light repenting, his arm was snapped off. Splinters of bone falling out from the socket. He looked down, and there was the branch beneath him. The apple, withering and dying. He screamed out, inaudible, seeing the thing he loved so much be cursed by his hand into the festering heap before him. Her eyes looking up onto the tree, at him, who’s flesh was still encased within it’s bows. She took up the branch, caressing the fruit as it bulged and grew hair. She couldn’t see it, she couldn’t feel it. She brought it up into her lips, the wriggling bindings still dangling the bleeding branch like a living vine ready to poison her. “What have I done? What have I done?” Her mouth opened to the decadent fruit, for the maggots to enter and her to be damned for eternity like him; forever within the wood to be broken silently.

Waking Aaron shot his eyes open, like a deep hue of colour plastering the room in it’s sheer darkness back into his eyes. A deep blue. Grasping his neck it felt a latching or cordage, and his other arm absent. He felt the numbing pain and tingle of open flesh. He reached for it’s socket but only found a wet hole, cold, and draining. He heard the sound of rushing water from his side, and the smell of iron and toxins. The smell became so pungent that he couldn’t bare it, frantically trying to find his missing arm. He rose, kicking something fleshy aside, further under the bed. For the first time, he feared his bed, and what was beneath it since he was a child. Reaching beneath he couldn’t find it, but the longer his hand laid scowering the ground, the more he feared whatever lived there would jump out to rip the veins out from his neck. Aaron plastered his back against the wall, hyperventilating, scarcely reaching out to the lamp beside his bed. It felt like it was a mile away, and his remaining arm was fifty pounds of shaking limp mass. He struggled to turn the knob, looking gravely below him, still listening to the rainfall on his wooden floorboards. In a mad rush, he turned from the creature which he was certain was under his bed, feeling the creeping behind him and held the lamp firmly to turn it’s switch with his extra hand.

The light turned on, and behind him was nothing. His walls which should be stained like wine were all white. Looking down at the lamp where his arms were after all, he counted the fingers on the other hand. Gripping the socket, Aaron felt the firm, solid bones of his sticky shoulder. His missing arm returned, however numb. It flopped about, slowly regaining life. His fingers moved, however delayed and however weak. He slid down feeling the dry smokey tan carpet numbly. His feet scoot out, sliding under the bed. When he noticed them nearing the dark overhang, Aaron jerked them back to safety where the rest of him was. The bed frame, denting his shins in the process but the pain seemed more manageable. Eerily, Aaron looked under the bed, almost bright enough to see under it. Slowly, and reluctantly he looked under it expecting something to jump at him. A corpse, or perhaps a spider so large it could only barely fit it’s fat body between the frame and floor. Maybe it crawled in there as a youth and grew, feeding off his dreams. Knowing he was looking, and hiding deep underneath the boxspring. There was nothing. Not even a tare in the boxspring. Feet stood at his doorway. Aaron jumped up. “Can’t sleep?” His father asked him.

Aaron’s back whipped against the wall, before identifying the safety of his Father’s presence and relaxed his head in relief. “Nah...” His breath still dilating to give passage back into his lungs. “Nah...” He looked up, limply moving his deadened arm out only to give out half way. He could only hear the falling of rain on the window.

“Dreams, huh? I forget what it’s like to dream some times. Usually the only times I remember, is when they’re the bad kind. Nightmares... Unfulfilled dreams. Dreams where people I know or otherwise do something to spite me and my anger wakes me up. I don’t really remember most things when I wake up, like I just kinda... Well... Showed up here as I am. As I grew older I also forgot how scary they can be for others. Like the fear just didn’t matter to me.”

“You still have a nightmare at all, or do those go away at some point?” Wiping the tacky sweat off of his forehead.

“No... Just... Just taxes.” Blandly recounting the horrors “Dreampt I filled in the wrong box, and the guys at G.O. Ontario --I think that was Government Office or something, if there is a real G.O. Ontario... Might just be unwishful thinking. They were coming by to take the farm away because of it so I got in the truck to drive out there and warn Aunt May... You know, pretty tame shit. It’s not so much scary as it is just infuriating. Still when I woke up though, I sure wanted to hop in that truck and drive out to Clear Water. How about you?” Watching the silence in Aaron. “Believe it or not helps if you talk about it...”

“We’ve done this since I was five...” Trying to remember what spawned any of this before the horror, Aaron recalled. “I was somewhere really peaceful, I think I knew what it was called, and where it was. I could probably find it on a map. Something inside wanted to get out. I tried to stop it but it tore my arm apart. Like it was allowed to when I stopped fighting. Felt like pennies getting raked and stuck to my skin, then just snap. So this lady came by to eat the fruit on the ground and all I could do was watch in horror. Felt like I was guilty for causing it to happen. I... I guess it doesn’t make sense. It makes a lot more sense when you’re there and it’s happening to you.”

“Once had a dream I was flying around on a broom. Pissed off whatever witch I jacked it from. Well she came after me on foot, no idea how she kept up with her stubby legs but it was a miracle she didn’t shoot my damn head off. Every time I took a corner the thing got smaller and smaller until I was just trying to balance on a toothbrush. Can’t explain much more of what happened. Honestly, that’s a pretty terrible description of what happened. Just the only things we understand how to express. They’re very... Emotional things, dreams... Like the physical and the emotional are like two separate narratives and you’re sandwiched in the middle of them like a screaming pinball. When that witch caught up, it was all numb but I had bones coming out my ears. I understood how they got there in the midst of a dream... but how the hell does a femur start extruding out of a man like Plasticine? Sure made sense at the time.”

“I could... Taste the fruit, even though it went into her mouth, it was cyst of morning breath.”

Seeing the horror in his son. “...I’m bringing up a little too much right now aren’t I? Right. Important thing is to remember that whatever happens, it’s not real.”

“Kinda more scared of dying in them more than anything...”

“Got you covered there too. They say if you die in your dreams you die in real life... Can’t tell you how many times things went black for me, falling off a cliff, and angering Old Man Gunther. We had a pun about him. I’m not sure if we know what death is like, but I keep getting the feeling that everything just kinda flat lines... And yet when it happens, I can always remember thinking about how I’m supposed to be dead now and it just don’t work like that.. Drown, lit on fire, shot, hitting the ground, electrocuted, having your soul ripped out of your body... Poisoned...”

“I really hope dreams about dying don’t run in the family.”

“It ain’t Huntington’s Disease, but some people are born with visions, prophecies, hit rock ballads. Old family books talks about it, Mill Burry’s kids all had them. Striking resemblance. Put you hair on end. Some even drew pictures with uncanny accuracy. But... You sure ain’t got that from me. Only vision I had was seeing the baker’s dozen of corned beef roll out onto the table, after my Pa struck upon a miss-pricing error... That and the gut aches I’d have a week later... You gonna be alright?”

“I’d prefer not bringing out the old kids phone tape recorder from the spare room like you used to. Gummy Worm’s Parade gets boring after a couple of listens.”

“Right... You try and get some rest. Just remember... Dreams don’t usually come in sequels... Although, there was once, with an invasion of mayonnaise containers. ” Turning to leave, but caught himself. “I SHIT YOU NOT!... First dream, just playing with my train set and the outbrake comes on the TV. Next dream I had a radar and they were all around my bed in the super market, had to run coz they were onto me. Last dream was blocking off the family home. Dumbest triple header of my life.... Anyway, try to get some rest, whatever you dream up next, it can’t kill you if it tried... And... I love you son.”

“Thanks dad...” Watching him slip out of the bedroom.

“Oh,” Peeking inside. “And we’re out of toilet paper so try to hold it in, coz the home improvement magazine will just clog the toilet...” Waving him off. “Still love you.”

Within the dark room, and the barley visible ceiling texture, the static noise before his eyes fell like the snow on an old tube television. His sight caught onto little details that moved, like a mirage that would ripple the air. Sometimes they were shadows, blotchy figures, or perhaps the deadened nerves of his retinas before sleep. For a moment he could feel the deep void underneath him, the shifting scaffolding that held up his consciousness and his eyes widened with a ringing in his ears. Realizing that he had seen far too important to forget, it frightened him to forget, yet something ate that worry away until calm. And this was nice. And he was comfortable, feeling the dread fade away, a dread which screamed at him from the bowels of his next sleep though hours later. A thing which he could not let himself forget after all.

For in this dream, when he should come upon the corpse of a dead goat, and weep he called it his poor dead idiot brother. The one who went left, as he begged him follow to the right, and died ignorantly. It was then that he knew the vines name, he had heard the name before, though in another sense of being. As though before birth, or perhaps after a death, shaken within the trauma of a frail mortality. Aaron refused to forget, else loose the memory of his kin, should such kin had ever truly existed.

Trying to remember how it was pronounced, every time Aaron came upon it, it was a different name, and in time, became mud. That’s to say, unclear. What a shitty name that would be otherwise. Pbth... Mud...

The milk ran out of Aaron’s spoon of soggy slop. Where once was a bowl of crisp dry kibbles was now a home of neglected waterlogged passengers from his shipwreck morning. “Can I get you to hang up the laundry?” His mother asked, and Aaron barely caught wind of her.

As the scent of detergent filled his nose, Aaron questioned if he really wanted to do this at all. From the moment it ended, Aaron turned for something but was caught again and this time put away the dishes, and again to clean the measly three freaking socks on his floor. “I need to get the heck out of here before I’m seasoning the toilet for the winter.” He closed the window, as the dry summer air was already creeping in from the shaded side of their yard.

Aaron pulled away long enough to leave sight of their steps and made his way towards town. The air was nice, despite it’s early rise on thermometer. Anywhere but being forced into submission was a relief. Even a wet culvert would be an upshot. Aaron hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Instinctively he meandered to Sophie’s place, for another fun fact filled lesson but stopped in the street, dismayed. “Is it really time?” He considered privately, like his whole unplanned day was dashed in remembering his lessons. The air of freedom around him called him in from the captivity of another brutal lecture. Aaron eyed the fence with a malignant frustration that spiked within him, leading down his leg and into his feet wishing to thrust it out of him; but seeing the signs of teenage angst already dented into it’s contorted chainlink, he left it aside and wept instead. Desperate to not make the same mistakes as was before him, he walked by before the notion could catch him off guard and leave the same pathetic mess the others made upon it. He knew himself to be better than that, but to be fair, he was still just as pathetic as those whom were engraved before him.

“What if I’m really just not cut out for this?” Finally piecing his troubles to a face and name. His stroll came upon the brook along Peach Orchard Road. The water wandered in from who knows where, kind of like how the creek at the elementary school just kinda vanishes, and the stream by the stone church kinda shows up from nothing. Spiders havens, beneath him was the webbing of a white floor, but that was easy to manage. He could scarcely make ten feet without walking face first into the countless traveller's triplines. As Aaron sat upon a lichen ridden rock in the dip before the road, he gandered carelessly off at the running water; looks like he made that wet culvert after all. He shook his head, not caring anymore. All around him was alive, birds chirping and bugs humming. There was peace but not in his heart. Where every corner he saw adventure, and discovery. Like a child within jumping up and down, annoyingly tugging on him to explore, whilst, he, that knew so much better slouched in on himself and grit his soul, wincing. “What if I’m just not the man for the job... If... I’m not meant for this kind of thing... If I understand something no one else can. Pbth” He scoffed at himself. “That sounds selfish. What if what just I know, he can’t teach me...” His ears caught the scurry of a tiny chickadee. It glanced at him, and cleaned it’s wing only to dirty the other against a leaf. It hopped closer, incrementally, then flew off without cause or reason.

“I wish I knew what this world was. Beauty... Everywhere, and yet it’s volatile, vicious, vindictive, violent.” Watching an ant fall prey to the web. “I could squish you, and end the pain, or free you and end your captor instead. Not brave enough to do it with my finger...” Pondering the method, with the tapping of his shoe. “It would be a mercy, compared to the fear and anguish you have now. I’ve only been chased by people... But a monster, that horrifying...” Feeling the chill run up his back, he placed the foot overtop, no longer able to see the eight legged aggressor, hinging it to drop carelessly as an accident. The missing figure unnerved Aaron even more than seeing it, and he felt the weight overhead which risen the hair on his neck, like a large foot rested above him.

Looking back to the ant tied to the ground, he saw it escape, and break free from it’s bonds to flake off into some other predator’s nest. Wherever that would be. His host, standing at the edge of it’s web, waving the feller off. “And here I am, using my strength to tell myself what I’m doing is right, and be proven wrong. What if I really do hurt someone one day, because of it.” Aaron sighed, as though all wonder had left and a shade of pale came over him. “I suppose I’ve wasted enough time here. Maybe I’m just being selfish.” The inner child now quelled, and the mystery around him no longer there. “When am I going to grow up and just get over it...” He sat voided from his wonders. Aaron sat for maybe 10 minutes, bored; no memory of why he was even there and cried without knowing why he was sad. He rose up, and staggered back up the hill towards his responsibilities. Belship would be wondering if he had been a lazy student, and Aaron didn’t want to disappoint him.

Aaron contemplated his entrance as the door received him. The glistening world outside dimmed inside the home, even more than it already had for his eyes.

It had come to be tradition at this point to alleviate whatever blockages Aaron had before beginning the next lesson. At first it was a formality, but now it was insisted after a recent lecture recital fell in the drink over a hang up Aaron had. Was no wonder he was so down lately. No matter how hard they tried to acclimate, the draining lessons would take their toll on them both, but not yet. The old man was uncomfortably common to leaving an open space in conversation, which Aaron would try to conclude and move on with vain commentary only restart the cycle again with a single useless comment. He wasn’t really sure how they got to this point anymore, as though two old men spouting dribble had finally fell onto something useful, and Belship’s bewonderment upon it.

“It’s not what we make that is impressive, but how it works that inspires. To have created something from what was inconceivable, to make ergonomic what was cluttered. To do what is complicated with what is most simple. You could create a device that could make a hundred flavours of ice cream, and impress me with just one of them.”

“The contradictions never seem to cease.” Aaron twiddled his thumbs, no longer upset anymore by these things. His ears would listen, but only find more unanswered, wondering if he was the problem.

“It’s not the over-the-top that is what is important. If you look past these road blocks you have, you may understand why your mind conflicts with the undeniable nature of the world. These contradictions exist only to someone who wants them to be there.”

Aaron’s weary eyes looked towards the door lovingly, but felt himself making excuses. He accepted the dogma once more, and met Belship in the middle. “Do you have any more devices I can see, or use? Something I can maybe hold to comprehend all this as you explain it?” Finally returning to any form of lesson and not just social backgammon.

Pouring himself a cup of straight water, Belship sat down around the table, giving Aaron a flat topped runway on a stick with some canisters on it’s bottom. As well as a glass of refreshment. “This is a device that I call by a serial number. It takes the natural formation of ‘air’ and strips the bindings between them creating both inverted, and uninverted reactions which are stored in the fuel tanks as they separate.” Refreshing himself between points, he continued harshly, forcing the water back down his throat. “In this case, zanthan the spacial bindings, and nitrogen as the physical extraction. The material of this pad has a chemical presence which unhitches the molecules like a solvent that is stationary, a solid one way valve. A chemical knife really...”

“They both sound like states though, inverted, uninverted, like positive or negative...” Setting his lips onto the glass, readying himself for the next elongated tale of covering his explanations with something beyond Aaron’s comprehension.

“We’re using your language as training wheels, remember?” Half waiting for a response but continued anyway. “Like Ying, and yang. North, South. The inverted reaction, and uninverted one are the push and pull of chaotic misalignment. It is always present, it’s categorical, not assigned. They both exist simultaneously, as two equal forms. Where there is a lack of one, there is the presence of another and cannot be converted to the other. This is what makes up the equation in a world of variable logic.” Seeing the glaze over Aaron faltering eyes.

“What is the use of this anyways?” Fiddling with his fingers, depressed.

In a dry sarcasm, Belship empathized, “Do you really need an answer for that?

“I mean, all of this, all these methods, all these formulas. I’ve been taught nothing but them, no way to use them... Where is the practical side? The application for all this?... We can go on for days about how to bounce numbers across, and logistical charts... It seems so superfluous without a cause or a means on how to use it.”

“When you pass between realms, this miracle occurs within you, and it changes based on your interaction. The reactive force, is the reality we receive. Alban’s signature, in essence. Like a mirror, the closer you appear to get to the entrance, the further into the room you actually enter.”

“But this stuff you teach me, it’s is like the math we’re fed in class, the follow after them and just accept it stuff where a calculator can solve all our problems without ever touching calculus... Who needs to know all that?... They...” Exhaling deeply Aaron caught himself. “The people who make the calculators, like me... Yeah... I know...”

“There are many levels of understanding before you can come to that interaction, maybe... Oh... Would you look at me prattling again...” Guiltily meeting the roadblock with another of his own hindrances. “If you want practical, that’ll take time... But, if you need faith, I’ll give you motivation. Those men who you witnessed in Penticton, all have an intimate connection with these kind of interactions on a very intimate, powerful level. If you want pseudoscience out of me... Their powers rival all comprehension that seems to exceed all known boundaries of this world. Tapia, Alban, Lucalieh, all, of this world, Even Mortina and Karnit. Perhaps there, outside my grasp, is where they learned these wizdoms.” Belship sighed, taking a deep nasally breath in, “I think you need to understand the scale of that anomaly.” Pulling out his glimmering arm weight, which had been a standard accessory as of late. “This crystal that you know all too well, is the far and few substances that exist capable of being able to interact with a subatherial constrate. Nothing else interacts with it, it’s not on any spectrum, charter or database. You are a magnet for the uncanny, Aaron...”

“Sophie keeps telling me it’s normal.”

“Sophenya takes for granted that the toilet flushes clockwise this side of the planet. The only known catalyst for dwarven creation is a man, and without a mind, or autonomy... All I can secrete with this almighty rock is a barrier of energy. No miracle, nor quirk, or semblance of form. From their hands, they simply create. Rock from air, life from void, death without leaving the body. I’ve never had such abilities, but Sashaenya... She did. She could bring a broken heart back from the edge.”

“Why the mood change? This isn’t your usual way of going about it... You expect, maybe I can tell you how those things work?”

“If it could avail you, it would do you more good than me... I’ve come to realize that there are more pressing matters as of late that require you to understand more than the whole as was before. I cannot let all this turn you away, not yet. Anything at this point would be more useful than you have now.”

“What, do you believe that the supposed ‘One’ they keep talking about will return?” But the question seemed to tickle Belship more than worry him.

For a moment of peace, Belship almost looked happy to think about it, yet the weight of it still lingered wearily behind his humour. “I am more than certain that these problems have plagued our worlds since the dawn of light and my individual suffering is only a drop in the bucket... If there is a day, where all time shall cease... If He should arise, and the moist sand in our hand dries to a powder that we can no longer hold between our fingers... When the burden of guilt be upon us... It would come at the day where the last flower dies out and no longer can a single cell in all of reality, progress even a micron of space. A true equilibrium, where nothing shall know that it is with form and all thoughts fled to void.” Belship looked bleak to describe it, taking a shy comfort that he seemed unable to assure himself with. “No force have we seen to muster such strength and there is yet plentiful energy in the world.” Taking another sip of water. “He, if He should arise would need to be all powerful, or in the least, enough to fool us of it. I suppose part of them, the supposed seven, believe that he will be the prior; that his strength would be of a strong blood line and so they then turn their eyes onto the next in power to caution their way into the future under a bloody pavement. Yet, there is the ability to still be deceived.” Huffing a silent thought to himself. Belship reposed to Aaron, as his tangents have lately driven them far off the point. His eyes shifted through the slit glance, trying to conceive something so much distanced from his usual approach. A token of civility that Aaron was not so accustomed to.

“Deceived, as in to simply make everyone believe it is ending?”

Shaking his head clean, Belship sympathized, and reasoned to Aaron. “I seem to have circled your question rather than build an understanding. Let me clarify. It is not the supposed ‘One’ that worries me. We have fought countless ‘one’s and every ‘one’ that passed by. A man looses faith in description. If He arises... I do not believe I have the eyes to discern any longer who He shall be. I do not think I can answer that question of yours anymore. When I think to what might be, by the words of old... I think... It is a prophecy which shall come only to those who are chosen... And I am no longer. Apt they finally forget about me. If He comes, if the world should face great peril as was never seen before since the first breath was cast into this realm... That prophecy be true, I believe it will resolve without me. If we are lucky, we will not have to worry about it in our life times.”

“I feel as though you could have separated as a group, and still maintained your place in prophecy. I get that it hurt you, but most of the guys on the team seem to feel like you do, or in the least, are a lot more fitting for such a feat. The other half are kinda assholes.”

“I won’t condemn you of that thought, I’ve had my share of comments before you were even born. More so in the last decade. Let’s say we did, how many denominations do we have as a result? Generations have passed, ideas have changed and the cause still remained. The word is true or it is not, we just interpret. When you are in the group, you think as the group... And you’ve seen what happens to people with their own thoughts, it turns to gnashing and tears as they turn upon the other... Fight, over definition, and forget their cause. You give me hope, boy, that willing optimism... If I could bestow my knowledge, it might avail you to succeed in my failure... But I know that such knowledge, the strife and trials ahead would also burden you to withdraw. I feel as though I weight it heavily upon you as is, so don’t concern yourself with it yet, it isn’t time. This path you seek, if you are to make any heed, then best you know it well... Then you may lift up my torch, like a son.”

“You have a lot of trust in me...” Aaron replied guiltily, gripping his legs. “I sure don’t feel any more special than the guy next to me some times. Sometimes I wonder if I have any gift of intelligence at all, or if it’s just wishful thinking. For all I know, I’m as dumb as everyone else, just in less of a position to do anything about it... Do you ever fear that I might use this knowledge badly?”

“Fear?... I believe it, very much. You are as I was, a boy albeit, but those fresh to knowledge desire to create but lack understanding it’s weight. Why else would I caution you as such. I do not wish them to suffer, nor you as a guilt of catastrophe... But those able to learn, should be allowed to.”

“And what if I don’t listen?” Folding in, his hands clasped above his knees, balancing him “If... In accident, they are misused. The entropy that you’re so concerned with, what if I am plagued to it?” Belship lifted his jaw to answer but Aaron continued. “What changed from day one, to make you so frantic to teach me, is it that I’m so stupid it’ll take me into my fifties?”

Sympathizing with Aaron, “There is always a chance, from the brightest pupil to the weakest apprentice, that they will do different than their nature...” Seeing a twitch in the old man’s lip and a caving of his resolve. “And because.” Finding the words in a sea of unspoken concerns. “There is also a guilt, towards you. I wonder if there is much choice, with the current situation. The thing that really bothers me of all this, that ‘growing interest’ that I had spoken of before we began; it’s about that footage that I told you about, in Penticton, the one that I reviewed... When... I saw that you are trailed by powerful men. They concern me, perhaps I’ve stumbled onto something more serious than ever.”

“That sounds more like reason to distance yourself.” Aaron admit, searched Belship’s eyes for malice, under the nervousness of his terrible position “Why have so much trust me then?”

“For the small miracle that you are still here, and have the eyes of a man who would not be taken in by them. You’re a good child, growing, with a sense that is unpervered. I have no way to free you from it, and yet I must... Lest my past becomes your future. Lest they take the light from your eyes, as was mine. Figuratively.”

“Come now, we’ve been over this. You said you were frightened of people here, so how much worse is it for these powerful men? I don’t get it.”

“Some things that were brought to light have stirred my thought lately and perhaps begun to make sense, especially concerning your causal anomaly in my life. What if it wasn’t my story anymore... These events that hurt me, they never did end and now I see it surround you as it was me. I can wither, I can accept this... I have learned to be very selfish in my arrogance, but you, Sophie... You can still be spared this sorrow. It may not be a war we can avoid anymore, and I’m in a position to do something about it.” Aaron’s head tilt for an answer, but Belship confided. “If old Hedrig wants you badly enough to draw you away, then you know too much to live a normal man. Best you learn the true world sooner, rather than later. Let us hope that it isn’t already too late.”

“You’re not the worst person to tell me that... Hedrig eh? Is that his name?” Aaron lifted his head. A nervous expression stricken slowly across his face. “Would... That man following me not frighten you?”

“Gravely... It is not a situation I can simply ignore.”

“Then you know Hedrig? The Gremlin that stalks me?” Aaron fixed his posture a frustration billowing in behind his voice.

“The gremlin?” Huffing humorously. “No, that isn’t Hedrig...” Belship corrected. “That blithering sock puppet has Hedrig so far up his ass it’s a miracle he can even shit! And the less you know about him the better. He’s worked from the shadows. I cannot place name nor figure upon him, and that is what is most dangerous. Men like that, have erased many voices to keep such a position of mystery. It was by chance I stumbled upon such name, do not utter his name outside these walls. What does he know of you?”

“Just that we’ve had a cussing match for the last three years. Damn, we’ve been at each other’s throats for a long while now...

“We should count that strange relation as a blessing. Less suspicion over any arising discourse. I would have otherwise informed you to distance yourself, but you seem to have already... And lived. Three... Three years...” Belship astonished.

“It’d explain why he’s always... Wait... How can I talk to you about him?... Every time I’ve ever tried to say something, I loose memories... I... Wait... I’m remembering a lot more. Every time he’s there, they come back, and they vanish when he leaves.”

“Hmm...” Belship pondered seriously, looking up to answer Aaron. “Since the Seven returned, I’ve rewired this house. It acts as a place where they cannot see within. The divine know they will still attempt to anyway... The... ‘Beneficiaries’, known by another name which should not be spoken either, It is bad enough I should utter Hedrig in all of this. They’ve always held an interest in the world’s affairs. After word that the world might end, they formed as a support fund, people who could get the Seven what they needed for the times it was required. Them, as a business, and us, as their own hope to prosper unending. It’s a symbiosis,” Belship chuckled cynically. “It was considered that they were just as any other troubled man who were faithful to a noble cause, and were the first to offer their hand. I had met many of suppliers as a member of their ‘armed guard’. Since these merchants and nobles formed, less and less had been known about them until there was no merit, nor deed that would be known by any eye outside the walls. It is what first came to me, before the turning of Altar, but only came to light after I should see what such secrets had wrought.”

Aaron felt the weight of knowing his reality for the last eight years actually had some relation to the world around him. For a moment, he was bewildered when he should remember that he was there on the rooftop in Penticton. Though such memory existed, not once did he think anything of it, as though it was merely a dream that he could recall from inanimately. From the moments in his room, to Thanksgiving when he was dragged away many times for a nose bleed that never existed only to remember the irking that culled him from the table. There came upon him a thought, one that superseded his astonishment and Aaron called in haste. “I need a pen... There is something in my mind that always slips away.”

“I fear such things are responsible for their... Disappearance.” Fulfilling Aaron’s request in a straightened attendance.

Upon the paper, Aaron simply wrote to return here.

“Hmm... Perhaps too obvious, although...” Belship graded. “Unless you have spoken of my position outside of this house, a ‘teacher’ is anyone but me. That esoteric detail should be retained and any others you may encode this with. What is it that you intend on remembering, anyway? I can keep a copy here for when you return, if you struggle to bring it up...”

“Nothing... Just the fact that I have forgotten. Imagine not knowing even that, how frightening it is to think what else is locked away in there.”

“I have come to despise this life of secrets and lies, yet I am thrust back like a slave to it once more. If the situation could allow it, I’d wish us all the freedom from this... I feel that you have been a gift, that I have sorely not deserved... If you can help it, whatever you should need to remember, keep it hidden lest they find to pluck it from your fingers. We should begin, while there is still focus left for us both.”

Aaron nodded, prepared with his circumstance.

After this affirmation, Aaron pressed himself to learn, as was truly all that laid between him and his shortened demise. From the concern of his stalkers to the curiosity he had for this world, he would leave his childish desires behind for the war at his hands. But no sum of desire could kindle the focus within him for very long and in time, he grew more tired. As though the abrasions were only made more deep by the desire to carve his head against the proverbial cheese grater.

Days would come bleakly, desperate to understand what was wrong and leave with less solidity than ever before. Diligently, learning of things he could never comprehend. Like a dim dark hole, where all sensibility lapsed to itself in a cryptic hellscape that he could hear, and latch onto breifly but never comprehend. Like a freefall of information, without a line.

The morning came and passed into the early afternoon. The birds chirped, and the warm air drafted in. There was a knocking that came inside the house. As Sophie investigated the strange origin of it’s deep low bodied rhythm, she came upon Aaron whose head was now firmly resting against the drywall. His face, pale with boredom and frail strength.

“Oh, you’re here...” Sophie said embarrassed, refixing the cover around her waist, “I should probably get used to that; especially if you are serious about Father’s offer for my hand.” But lazily reconsidered, and left it loose. “Honestly I’m surprised your still here on the weekend; not sure why you’d spend it listening to my father’s lectures...” Her homely qualities utterly made oblivious by the wall in front of him.

“Typically, yeah... No, I wouldn’t be, but it’s what I have to do. It’s what is between me and figuring this all out... Of, whatever is going on without me... But,” Prying himself from the wall. “Bloody hell.” Speaking into his masking hands. “I’ve been sitting here all day, just like yesterday, like the day before, like a second round of education every, damn, day!...” Falling backwards into the couch. “Just trying to figure out the most convoluted thing... You probably understand it alright, hell, I’d bet you mastered it before you ran out of your diapers... But for me, it’s too... Technical, too much math, too much technically non-states and no diagrams. All theological gates and correctional ideologies... Starting from the end and working backwards until we find a path that leads to what we have where we have it. Like dye in a watery labyrinth, magically finding it’s way out, how the FECK does it do that automatically? It’s BULLSHIT!”

Leaning over the upholstered spine, she looked down at the overworked baby. “I found most of my success in fiddling around. I think my father forgets that from two points of understanding that a person needs to come to that conclusion of their own accord. I could tell you anything, and believing that I’m right or not won’t give you any idea what it means until you’re there.” Pulling off of the couch, she continued from out of sight. “He thinks that it speeds the performance but leaves it unanswered, expecting us to figure the rest out for him. Far as I’m concerned, that blind faith just holds a framework for us until we come to that point of affirmation ourselves. Until then, it’s another task and function on the list to process. Take the air for example.”

“Shit, you really do talk like your father... I’m not sure I have the focus to even hear a comedian explain his morning routine, let alone how air works.”

“It has a million things in it that you can’t see, and every time you look at it, there is a new thing to discover. It’s inspirational, like water or fog.” She continued. Aaron’s eyes veered inattentively. “If you had something to work on, you’d probably have an easier time studying these concepts than to simply be told how they work.”

“Yeah, I tired that with him, but apparently everything I work on can destroy half the continent. Should feel lucky he hasn’t blown us all already.”

Returning with a box and a hand full of cereal. “I don’t know,” Eating them dry like party mix. “Find something reactive, and apply your knowledge to understand why. My salavine spray works after I studied how people avoid certain vegetables like the plague, myself included. After a few brussle sprouts and a bottle of solvent later, instant odourless person replant... Since the cat incident however, I’ve retired it. Also, It’s repulsive, so... Mission accomplished.”

“The only part my mind picked up was ‘go out’ and ‘find something to tinker with’. I... I kinda relate to that. I think. Beats sitting around here, learning... Quantum Greek.” Reorienting his woozy head.

“Exactly, start answering some questions, and you’ll have less on the work board to juggle. You need a break anyway.”

Aaron took to relieve himself from the stress of figuring it all out, and gratified her as he recounted. “The only time I got excited about anything was when it was right there in front of me. It’s the reason I have any passion in creating things... Thing I... Never seem to finish.” Guiltily coming out. “He says a creative mind needs to understand his tools to make anything. I guess... Sure...” Sitting himself up. “Hey... You got any fancy tools we could use to find these... Enigmas, anomalies?” Taking a spin, light headedly. “Treasures... I mean, now that I know about your family business, and the rest of the unknown universe does too. Any real fast access devices? You know, real top shelf shit? Come on, something, anything to get out of this house where I don’t constantly hear the low hum of the energy shield, and the mechanical turning of whatever asinine printer’s been shitting out paper in the next room since the third grade.” Finally mustering the strength to pull himself from the chesterfield.

“We could take out the... Oh, I’m not going to bother you with the name of this one. Your head already looks enough like a watermelon. Sure.” Firmly giving Aaron’s back smack as she headed for the stash, “I could use some exercise. Bring the ‘AU-79’ tracker while I’m at it.”

“Sophie, you are a Goddess. I’m getting my shoes.” Nodding to Belship who was just returning back down into the dungeon from outside with a fresh coffee. “So, is it all ready to go, or?...”

Coming out of her room, “I got everything pre-packed in this bag, standard issue, figured it’d save time” Handing him the plastic before turning to grab the rest “But the AU, just let me...”

“MIGHTY TARTARUS!” Belship exclaimed from the bottom. Kraytoes walking up from the stairs. “Sophenya S. Keithson!” She changed her mind, slipping her shoes on. “Sophenya S. BELSHIPSON! Where are you?! Your cat has SHIT ALL OVER MY WORKSPACE!” Sophie slipping out the back door, with Aaron sliding out close behind. “What are you feeding him? There is so much cat shit freaking EVERYWHERE!”

“You know he’s trying harder than he was before with you,” Sophie comforted, “I think he might actually make some progress.”

“Great,” Aaron shook his head. “Because all it’s doing for me is piling on the workload, especially now that it seems my life depends on it.” Letting out the air from his tense lungs. “So, how do you deal with it? Actually, I want to reconsider that. The constant wind blowing in my ear is starting to get good.”

“Exactly what we’re doing right now.” Trying to catch his sight, but Aaron’s eyes fixed only ahead and towards the ground. “You’ve sat around for nine hours a day, for the last week. I’m not some kind of super focus bot, so I can’t expect anyone else to.”

“Sure makes me look forward to joining the workforce... You ever wonder why toll booth guys always look like they’re just one step off the platform away from permanent retirement.” Creasing his eyes. “Wow, I’m sorry, that was really dark. I’m really not in a good head space.”

“Could be worse, might just end up back at the office in a wheel chair, with all the medical expenses stapled to his worksheet.”

“You picked up that was a joke, yea?”

“The basis of dark humour is completely situational, the guy at the toll might get a chuckle out of it, he might not. If we’re taking pot shots at his situation...”

“I said I’m sorry, what’s your mystery finder say? Or are we still worried about space time orangutans coming to steal our lunch money?”

“Space... Orangutans...”

“Don’t think about it, not a word, not one single bloody neuron...”

Looking sternly vexed, she released her irritation and directed. “South... South by south east. Approximately three and a half kilometers, or an hours walk.”

“It gives a distance too?” Aaron astonished.

“You really want me to explain.” Sophie sadistically enticed with the full tone of passive aggression backing her. Aaron shook his head bashfully. “You might be surprised what else it can tell you...”

Up past the hill, the location nudged away from Simpson road, and just up from the main road. Aaron began to piece his thoughts together, and hoped to be mistaken. Sophie chimed in, “Signal is roughly past your place.” Cheerfully impressed.

“Great...” He dismayed, “I thought I hated it the last time I was there.” Turning to behind them and pointing at the hillside “Can’t we just grab a gemstone out of the side of Cartwright?”

“You’re starting to moan like Zachery, with his plot to find a golden egg under his porch instead of the open world,” Sophie dismissed, lowering the extended finger just for it to mast once more. “which however convenient, is lame and I thought his bullshit taught you better.”

“Zack taught me why he hates going places. It’s like a brotherly experience, getting chased by literally every living thing that hates you.”

“He taught you how to use white out too.” Slanting her eyes. “Come on, the signal is right past there.”

Aaron continued his moaning, “How lucky, I live next to and or found the only one in town. There couldn’t be one next to the video store where we started, no... Wasn’t under the underpass either.”

“I don’t think it’s so much the luck of finding the only one, so much, as that one was made there. It makes more sense than random chance. Believe it or not but some particles only react when they are made aware that something has observed them.”

“This quantum cat theory, or? Oh, shit, you’re Father mentioned that too... If it was created there, who say’s it’s not a trap designed to kill me? Sure seemed like that last time I was there.”

“You’ve giving me every distraction under the book, do you want an adventure, or no?”

Pouting, Aaron put his thoughts poorly into words. “I feel like if I go back to your dad’s my head will explode and I will die just like the lifeless numbers inside an equation he spouts off, just... Poof ya know? Become a fraction and just die... And if I go any further, I will be ripped in two by squirrels and die... Just with slightly more satisfaction, and physical horror.”

“Well, what’ll it be?”

“Sophie...” Standing in the road. “I trust you, just...” Shaking the stagnant baggage from his side long enough to be honest with her. “I’ve had some bad experiences here. I’m sure everyone got a laugh at it, and it was a cool gag. ‘hey, look, Aaron’t covered in face leaches, haha!’ but that stuff sticks with you. It sits in the back of your mind, eats away at a person... It’s haunting.”

“Why do you think I brought the squirrel radar?” Holding out the device in question. “You’re going to have to get over it some time, or give up, even if they are ravenous and bloodthirsty psychopathic killers. When we grow older, we will have to work or go homeless. Your baggage doesn’t omit you from having to make that choice. One day, you might not have the luxury to sit idle; and when that time comes that you get out of that shell, these grand mysteries that you spent years raving about might have already passed you by.”

Lowering his head “You’re right... I feel like your taking a page right out of my book.”

“Partially I was.” Dragging Aaron along

“Fine,” Picking up his feet. “But I don’t have to be happy about it.”

“Most people seldom are. I admired your conviction most. It pains me to see you lose it so easily.” She empathized.

Huffing sarcastically “Easily...” Aaron scoffed. “I came to a point of confidence coming out of that medieval realm, squirrels and all. No clue to where it went, guess it’s still kinda cute in comparison to recent events. Honestly, it’s easier than sitting down to those lessons, and that’s really messed up...”

“Oh look, my bullshit detector is going off... Nope, just you.”

“Ignore me, I’m just gonna be barking.”

Sophie looked disappointed but went on with him. He felt guilty in her pitying him out to such a place. He would have turned her away, but she brought him out of her own volition, constantly trying to cheer him up and he felt really guilty.

As the green flushed out the grass from the usually summer golden grey, they came upon a glade which beautiful matte red berries had an strang plump coating. You could see it’s dark pit through an intentional hole, with a solid rim around it that wasn’t bulged inside. Aaron gazed at the mystical shape and alien form. “Yew berries...” Sophie identified, inattentively, walking past. “Always wondered what made that shape...”

“Oh...” Aaron complained. “So we’re still not there yet? I could never determine where the line is on these gateways, or if it all just kinda blends together and acclimates gradually. It’s always smooth, but... I’ve only been through... Four of them so far?”

Aaron turned to a sound overhead but it seemed to be coming from Sophie instead. He took great confusion at her body which emitted the chirping noise he heard, one of anger and lamentation. Like a hive of crickets all taking a cumbersome shit. He could sense the scurry of the tree highway approaching. She looked to him with a grave pale face of disappointment. “Guess who popped out the batteries to run their oscillating amplifier instead...” Waving the useless radar around. “Well, it’s a good thing they’ve never seen me before, just keep your eyes straight like they’re not there, and we should be hidden... Oh...” An acorn pelting off her head. “Right... Forgot why I brought the radar with us. You’re here...” Hearing the declaration of war passed onto the friend of their enemy. “Was really hoping I could avoid this tribal disputes until I was at least old enough to be excused of not caring.” Before jetting herself towards the gateway.

“You think running’s gonna confirm their prejudice?” Following in behind her.

“They already made their judgments, they’re anarchists. All I can hope for is to cover my identity, or else they might decide to drop ‘gift baskets’ off at my door.”

The pelting was worse than before. It seemed as though it was an expected roadway. Like a crime scene with the tape still up, and a guy in the corner with a scratch pad. As the assault continued Sophie exclaimed an utterance which echoed louder every time it was spoken “Squalku! Squalku!” until the pelting had slowed to a near halt.

Aaron panted, still making his run until met with the stream. “Overdid it again...” Preparing himself for the hop over, Sophie flopped a thick log over the water and walked up the embankment. “Sure, if you want to do it the easy way...” Taking the stairwell up. She peered down both paths, til Aaron settled on things. “Well, considering last time we went to the left, and that was a mistake, the right clearly has to want it out to kill us even harder.” Bitching like the prom queen at a doggy high school.

The tone finally breaching past Sophie’s bullshit wall. “How about you start piloting your meat mech and stop letting the guy in the back seat do all the talking.”

Touching a nerve, Aaron turned his discontentment to his partner with a stern vexation. “How about... Yeah...” Aaron creasing the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, you’re right... But if I take the handlebars, everything blows up in my face a whole lot worse than if I got someone to blame for my stupid choices.”

“Huh...” Sophie dumbfounded. “I’m curious what made you want to talk about this for once. Realized a little late there, that’d probably have make things worse.”

“Just... Tired of giving up the front seat I guess... Come on, it’s not like I’m gonna figure anything out by sitting my duff on a stick in the back yard.”

“No need for me to apologize then, I guess...” Sophie uttered in relief, but Aaron could hear the tone clear as day. Though he could not hear the words that followed after that escape her lips, Aaron could nearly hear the intonation that passed through her mind; as though reading the pages in behind her sympathetic cover in a concerned curiosity, she had to be thinking it, “How could a man that knows so much, be so ignorant at the same time...” And Aaron was truly anguished by the pride and arrogance that resonated inside him. The road continued in his frustration, and yet he knew not what he was truly fighting against.