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Anastasia Tension was always good at looking at the details.
It was sort of her thing, you know. Focusing. Looking close up. Paying attention. Other parts of the brain can choose what to pay attention to, can ask questions, can make moves- But Anastasia was the one that actually looked. She was the one with the notebook in her hand, paying attention to everything that was happening. That was her. That was what she always did. She noted the small things- the things that other people missed in their chase for something bigger. Anastasia wanted something bigger, but she didn’t need it. All she needed was to keep looking at the details, and everything would end up making sense. So, Anastasia just kept paying attention to the details.
And, well, the detail she was paying attention to right now was that she was no longer in Elias’ brain .
It was obvious, really. As soon as she had looked up, she knew that she was no longer in Elias’ brain. It was still night, like Elias’ brain, but a different kind of darkness. It wasn’t foggy and raining- instead it was a dry sort of heat, like summer during a drought. Dark but with no breeze, a barely there moon hidden by the clouds. There were birds up in the sky, unlike Elias’ brain, circling menacingly. The ground underneath Anastasia was no longer stone, but yellow-ish green dying grass, trampled and muddy and ugly. And- of course, there was the lack of buildings. The lack of buildings was a large clue. It was all spread out, unlike the compact way that Elias’ brain was. Sprawling hills, with small stone buildings, almost built like little castles, littered every direction Anastasia could see. There was absolutely no way that this was Elias’ brain at all.
Anastasia knew where she wasn’t. But she didn’t know where she was .
It was clearly someone’s brain. But she didn’t know whose brain would look like this. A sick person’s brain, maybe. She thought that other people’s brains would look just like Elias’- and yet, it seemed that that was not the case. It couldn’t be the case, because, well, this certainly wasn’t like what Anastasia was used to. It was so sparse. It was so warm. It was so dry. There were people, it wasn’t like there weren’t people. But there were far fewer than in Elias’ brain, at least here . Maybe there would be a city center, a town square, or something. But for now- the place looked barren. And dying. With gnarled trees and circling birds and a general aura of death surrounding the place. She had no idea where she was. She had no idea why she was here. She had no idea how she would get back to Elias’ brain.
The only thing Anastasia really knew for certain was that she was going to find out.
“Excuse me, excuse me!” Anastasia called out to the person she was closest to. “Can you help me, please?”
“Can I, can I,” the person hummed. They were a sickly green, small and- and they hardly looked like one of the parts of the brain in Elias’. They had pointed ears and sharp teeth and- “Oh, I believe I can!”
She ignored how weird this all was. “Where am I, exactly?”
“What a question, what a question,” the person hummed. “Where are we, indeed? Where are any of us?”
Anastasia sighed. This was not a good source of information. Or even a good source, in general.
“But in whose brain?” Anastasia asked, point blank.
“Ah,” the person said. “You are in the brain of Squing!”
Anastasia frowned, taking out her notebook. “Squing? Is that a first name or a last name?”
“It is first and last,” the person said. “Front and back. Up and d-”
“ Okay ,” Anastasia said. “So, I’m in the brain of someone named Squing Squing.”
“No, no, no!” The person cried out. “Just Squing! Once! A last name and a first, a forename and sur, a-”
“I get it,” Anastasia said, scribbling out the second ‘Squing’ in her notebook. “Squing. One word. Got it.”
“Good,” the person said. Or were they more of a creature-
“Now,” Anastasia said. “Who’s the leader, here?”
“Leader?” The creature asked, tilting their head just a little too much to be comfortable. Or possible.
“I doubt you have a mayor,” Anastasia said. “This place looks rather- old fashioned. Do you have a king? A- a mother? A chief? Who controls what ‘Squing’ does?”
“We all do,” the creature said. “Although, Imp does do a lot of heavy lifting. He has a lot of good ideas.”
“Imp,” Anastasia said, slowly. “As in- Impulse? This brain is led by impulse?”
Great. She had one day where she didn’t have to deal with her cousin, and she ended up in a brain run by the same part of the brain.
“Is this brain run by anything?” The creature asked.
“What’s your name, then?” Anastasia asked. She didn’t exactly care to know, but it was a detail she should know. “I’m Anastasia Tension. A. Tension, in fact.”
“Fancy name,” the creature said. Anastasia was worried, just a second, that they weren’t going to tell her heir name in return. But then- “I’m Obediah. Obediah Fuscation.”
Anastasia frowned. She had never heard of ‘obfuscation’ being a part of the brain before. But, well, there was a first time for everything, she supposed. Especially in a brain as weird as this brain seemed to be.
“Well! Thank you!” Anastasia said, as she ran off.
She doubted she would learn anything else from Obediah. No. Anastasia needed to find someone who made actual sense, in this brain. Ideally, she would have to find herself. Or, at the very least, the version of herself that existed in this brain. There had to be some sort of Attention somewhere, didn’t there? Anastasia would just have to find it. Or, at least something similar. Curiosity, maybe. Hunch could always be a little bit dependable, in a pinch. Impulse would be- not ideal, but at least Anastasia knew how to deal with Impulse. More than she knew how to deal with Obfuscation, of all things, at the very least. Either way, she would have to find out how to get out of this weird, weird, brain, and back into Elias’. And to do that, she would need to find someone to talk to. Ideally someone who actually made sense. Attention. Curiosity. Determination. Definitely not Impulse. Anything but Impulse. Please, just not Imp-
“Hi there!” A voice suddenly yelled, shaking Anastasia out of her thoughts.
“Hi,” Anastasia said, slowly. She turned around to see a similar, pointy eared creature, but this time a bright, neon blue, and just a slight bit taller.
“What are you doing here?” The creature asked. “Who are you? Are you new? Oh, I love your hat! Can I-”
“I’m Anastasia Tension,” Anastasia said, holding tightly onto her hat. She had a feeling she knew exactly who this was, but just to be sure- “What’s your name, then?”
“Impulse,” the blue creature said, now having moved on to try to snatch Anastasia’s notebook. “But everyone calls me Imp.”
“I can see why,” Anastasia said, with a slight smile.
“So,” Imp said, now somehow holding one of Anastasia’s pens, clicking it repeatedly. “What’re you doing here? You are new, aren’t you?”
Anastasia did laugh, then. “Are you sure you’re not Curiosity?”
“Curiosity is boring ,” Imp whined. “She’s always caring about getting answers to the questions. I just like asking them!”
“Why ask questions without getting the answers?” Anastasia asked, confused.
That sounded- well, it sounded like insanity to her, quite frankly. Anastasia lived for the answers. For the focus. For-
“Did you take my notebook?” Anastasia asked, suddenly. All of her pens were back, but- “Are you eating my notebook?”
“Isn’t paper delicious?” Imp asked. “I make Squing eat letters all the time. Letters are the best. All the ink .”
“Did you eat my notes?” Anastasia asked in reply, snatching the notebook back. “I just wrote those!”
“I told you, the ink is the yummy part!” Imp declared.
Anastasia sighed. “Okay. I need to go find answers-”
“Oh, who needs answers,” Imp whined, grabbing Anastasia’s hand. “I know exactly where we should go.”
“No, no, I need to pay attention to things that actually matter,” Anastasia said, trying to wrench her hand away.
“Everything matters!” Imp answered, as she kept her surprisingly strong grip on Anastasia’s hand. “Now, come, come! It’ll be fun!”
Imp started running forward, and Anastasia could do nothing but follow after her, practically dragged through the streets by her hand.
“Where are we going, exactly?” Anastasia asked, after a minute.
“I dunno,” Imp admitted. “I’m just going where the wind takes me. Us! Where the wind takes us!”
“There’s no wind,” Anastasia pointed out. “We’re in a brain.”
“Metaphorical wind,” Imp said. “Don’t you know what a metaphor is, silly?”
“Of course I know what a metaphor is,” Anastasia huffed.
“Then why are you confused?” Imp asked. “It makes total sense. Oh, let’s go this way-”
“I didn’t know you knew what a metaphor was,” Anastasia sassed.
“Of course I know what a metaphor is,” Imp said. “Metaphors and allegories and shops . Oh, we should go this way! Have you ever been to the shops?”
“I’m not from around here,” Anastasia said, blandly. “Or from this brain.”
“Oh, well that explains it,” Imp said, although Anastasia didn’t know what exactly was being explained. “Wait! If you’ve never been here before, you have to see the control center! That’s where all the fun is!”
Anastasia felt bad for whatever Imp would get up to, in the control centre of ‘Squing’s’ poor brain- but also, well, everyone Anastasia had met so far was sort of just like that so maybe this was just what Squing was like- yeah, no, that too far fetched, even for Anastasia. A person who acted like Imp did, all the time? That was unconscionable. Still, it seemed that Imp did have a key, and access to the switchboard, so maybe that was Anastasia’s best bet to get answers. The last time things had been strange, the answers had lain in the switchboard, and someone having tampered with it- so maybe somebody had tampered with Squing’s switchboard, too. Or maybe Elias’. Either way, it probably wasn’t best to let Imp go alone to Squing’s control centre, so-
“Okay, let’s go there,” Anastasia finally decided.
“Go where?” Imp asked.
Anastasia sighed. “Go to the switchboard? Like you suggested?”
“Oh! You’re right! We should go to the switchboard!” Imp practically yelled. She turned around, and started running in the complete other direction. “We should go this way! I think!”
“Do you have a map?” Anastasia asked.
“Why would I have a map?” Imp asked.
“So we can go to the control center without getting lost?” Anastasia asked.
“Why would we want to not get lost?” Imp asked, as if that question made any sense whatsoever. “Getting lost is the fun part!”
“I’m pretty sure getting where we’re going is the fun part,” Anastasia said, flatly. “Or- not the fun part. The important part.”
“Everything is important!” Imp declared. “Oh, it’s this way! Maybe! The brain is always changing, you know, so a map wouldn’t even do any good.”
“What do you mean the brain changes?” Anastasia asked.
Imp tilted her head. “Your brain doesn’t change?”
“No!” Anastasia said. “Why would the brain change?”
“Our brain changes all the time,” Imp declared.
Anastasia didn’t believe that for a second. And it must have shown on her face.
“Look at that building, right there,” Imp said. “That’s the bakery. And we passed it. Three times now, we’ve passed it.”
The building did look familiar. But- “We’ve only walked in a straight line, though. How is that possible?”
“Because the brain changes!” Imp said. “Obviously!”
“Right,” Anastasia said, slowly. She supposed it wasn’t the craziest thing, considering that she had somehow been put into another brain. “So you can’t make a map. It just always changes.”
“Now you get it!” Imp said. “So now we just keep walking, and it’ll eventually show up!”
“But what do we do, if we can’t actually look for the switchboard?” Anastasia asked.
“You enjoy it!” Imp said, far too loudly. “Oh, look, a tree!”
It was, in fact, a tree. A blackened, gnarled tree, but a tree nonetheless. Anastasia just hoped that they would find the switchboard sooner rather than later.
“Isn’t it a nice tree?” Imp asked.
“Yep,” Anastasia said, eager to keep on walking. Maybe the switchboard would show up nearby. “Such a nice tree.”
“You’re not even looking at it,” Imp said. “Not properly, anyway! Actually look.”
Anastasia turned all of her attention, ha, to the tree, just to appease Imp. But- She found herself staring at the tree intently. It was, actually, an interesting tree. Not nice , but interesting. Much like everything else in this place it was shrouded in darkness, blackened and gnarled and dark looking. But it was- it was an interesting tree. There were little knots in it, crags in the bark. There was a trail of dark moss, running up the side of it. An ant, crawling down part of it. The branches weren’t bare, but sparse. A tree that had once been bright and green and summery, which was now dark and dying. There was a leaf fluttering in the wind, threatening to fall. There was a nest, in the tree, so high up it was nearly imperceptible, made of branches and dying leaves. It was- it was beautiful, she decided. Not what most would call a standard tree, but beautiful nonetheless. Or perhaps because of its abnormality.
“Now you’re looking at the tree,” Imp declared.
“It is a nice tree,” Anastasia agreed, though this time she meant it.
“It is,” Imp said, grinning. She tilted her head. “Do you want to climb it?”
That was something that would only slow them down. It was only a distraction. It was-
“Sure,” Anastasia said, moving forward to begin to climb the tree.
And then, suddenly, Anastasia was back. Back in Elias’ brain. Back where she had been standing. Back-
Why was she back? How was she back? Those were important questions. There were a lot of important questions, actually. But maybe more important than the questions, were the truths. The things she already knew, without asking the questions at all. She knew that she had started in Elias’ brain. She knew that she had been transported to another person’s brain. A person named ‘Squing’, who may or may not have been human at all, but a person nonetheless. She knew she was now back, in Elias’ brain, right where she had started when all of this began. But what she didn’t know, what she had questions about, was how she had gotten back.
Anastasia didn’t know for sure. But she did have a guess. A lot of guesses, actually.
Was it something to with what she had said? Was there a keyword, a phrase that she said, which had brought her back? Had she physically done something? Like that book, Elias had read, a long time ago- The Wizard of Oz. Had Anastasia clicked her heels together three times? She didn’t think she had. But maybe it had something with her looking at the tree. Touching the tree? Had she touched the tree? Maybe Imp had been misinformed, and the control panel was the tree. There were a lot of maybes. A lot of options. A lot of guesses. Had she been brought back by someone else’s actions? Her own actions? There was no way for Anastasia to know, quite yet.
Either way, she would most definitely figure it out. With the help of her friends, it seemed.
Had they had the same experiences? It turned out they had. They had all managed to hunt her down, it seemed, when they had all come back from the same odd experiences. The things that they remembered were different from the things Anastasia had. Most of them cared little for the details that Anastasia had paid attention to- but at the same time, they had learned things that Anastasia hadn’t. Apparently, they had switched, somehow, with the people they had replaced. So Squing’s Attention had been in that brain at all, but instead, somewhere in Elias’. Interesting. They didn’t want to solve this case quite the same as Anastasia wanted to, they would most likely slow her down, but Anastasia found herself caring less than she normally would have.
Even if her friends would most likely slow down Anastasia’s investigation she was- she was oddly fine with that, so long as she was with them.