Chapter Text
Void.
So it was. Wasn't it? What was it? Need it be so bright?
Need. A novel concept. What was need? What did need imply? An absence?
Presence. With and without.
Duality. The void shuffled. A geometric, illusory dapple pattern. Anaglyphic; pale blue.
Logic. An underlying dance to it; a mode of comprehension... A thing to warrant thinking.
Thought. Did that exist? Where did it come from? For whose need?
Identity.
Cogito, quis ergo sum ego?
Frog.
...?
Frog. Apparently.
...
This was not among the order of operations for the gradual emerging of cognizance; that much she could understand. Had she skipped ahead a few stages by accident? Surely if she nixed "frog" from the data chain and started over, reality would rebuild itself towards something resembling sense. It was like assembling IKEA furniture: if you implemented instructions further than the page you were on, then the prudent thing would be to course-correct.
Yes, reasoned ______, she must have simply woken up wrongly — and that was why she was a cartoon frog with a bow tie in an infinite blinding void, clinging for dear life to a bright red door marked "exit," instead of a regular woman at her cubicle in a data center in Baltimore. This made a groggy sort of sense.
Although she did not remember falling asleep, she clearly must have. The frog slapped herself with her free hand, then stared at her fingers placidly. Then she gazed past them at the yawning abyss below.
Food for thought: ______ had felt herself come into being from nothing. Dreams didn't work like that. Nothing worked like that. Shrooms only approximately worked like that.
Maybe, interjected the part of their brain not emulating a deer in the headlights, you should think about literally anything else.
Alright.
She recalled how her co-worker in the adjacent cubicle — his name escaped her — had been blaring music through his shitty earbuds again. They leaked just enough to render the lyrics coherent if you focused, and naturally she had hyper-fixated on it because she'd mistimed when the prescription amphetamines would lock her into a train of thought. ______ didn't remotely like Insane Clown Posse, but it was still a welcome reprieve from the tedium of her current project. It went something like:
"Yeah, can I walk into McDonald's, and to the counter
And tell 'em you can make limestone from gunpowder
Will they give me a cheeseburger if I know that shit?
Fuck no, fuck you, and shut your fuckin' lips"
As it turned out, sometimes they do give you one. Sometimes you're the only hire at the company even somewhat capable of decompiling twenty-six sequential .zip files' worth of LISP programming. Sometimes your superiors can't be bothered to look into the subsidiary they've been squatting on for nine years until something forces their hand. Sometimes they decide to bury you in cheeseburgers.
She'd once broken into the old C&A building with some buddies for a blunt rotation without even realizing it was company property. Now she was in the thick of it: restructuring decrepit simulations into something compatible with modern computer systems like a house flipper, utilizing the exact same VR headset she'd passed around with that blunt half-a-decade ago. ______ didn't like to think about those days anymore. Besides, weed was legalized in Maryland three years back — ironically the same time she quit and turned her life around.
She was rambling to herself. ______ knew she was rambling. Her arm was getting tired clinging to the door handle, and try as she might, this form lacked the upper body strength to swing her other arm high enough to grip the top of the door frame. So, she did the reasonable thing.
"FUCKING HELP!" cried ______, pounding on the exit door like a madman, "LET ME IN!" Then, upon rereading the helpful white lettering: "LET ME... OUT?! LET ME- FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK?!"
The door itself was sturdy and metallic, but above the solar roar of the void and the cacophony of impolite solicitation, there sounded a commotion from behind it — and then the muffle of approaching footsteps.
Meanwhile, Jere Nilekani took off the headset, none the wiser.
Her head felt funny. She frowned.
"Yo, Mills." In response, the high-passed dulcet tones of ICP's "The Dead One" ceased with the exaggerated tap of a spacebar, signaling Jere to continue: "What's the over/under on this warning sticker being decorative?"
"Someone tried to peel it off," Milenko replied from beyond the cubicle wall. "So it's probably fine."
Did that make sense? Nilekani checked the front of the headset again, and the off-centered warning sticker affixed to the yellow-beige plastic was indeed damaged. On the one hand, the symbol wasn't one she recognized; she could easily picture someone trying in vain to remove it as the result of a bizarre office prank. On the other, it looked too durable for that. What did they make it out of, retail price stickers? Who'd go to the effort?
(A goddamn asshole, that's who. Jere used to know someone like that.)
"What if this gear is radioactive or something?" she countered. Shoot, what was her co-worker's first name? Llyod? Lloyd Milenko, yeah.
"Unless C&A wanted to take x-rays of their employee's brains," said Mills, "I doubt it." Another tap, and the song played on.
"Life goes on for some
My boys all stare at me I wonder what they think
They don't blink and my teeth keep popping out I stink
Oh, tell me am I dead? I'm sorry but you're dead
I don't want to die, maybe I outta go if I'm dead"
(Shaggy 2 Dope remained as prescient as always. Jere was certain at least one of them was called that, the insipid fucks.)
Say, didn't one of the old C&A people die of a brain tumor? their brain unhelpfully supplied.
Nilekani decided she needed a break and got up from her desk.
It was like Conversant Solutions hadn't fully grasped that C&A wasn't some looming specter of the industry rather than yet another company they'd bought out. These mysterious transmissions weren't from the boogeyman. The contents of these .zip files hadn't been proprietary since Y2K. Sure, it was novel to use the UI of a 90's VR headset as a programming aid, but that novelty wore thin after about five minutes. Besides that, as soon as she'd executed a rudimentary sim it had done something to her head and now she felt the mother of all migraines on the horizon with an odd sense of déjà vu.
Still, Nilekani could bluff her way through the rest of the day. If there was one life skill Jere Nilekani had honed in her familial, social and professional lives, it was how to bluff her ass off.
There were five of them in the dimly-lit C&A office: The clown who'd opened the door, the ragdoll, the chess piece by the old computer, the ribbon... thing, and... ah...
"Holy crap!" exclaimed the ragdoll. "Ribbit? How the-?!"
"You!" the even odder-looking stranger accused, sounding strikingly butch for an androgynous collection of... doinks? Was that the word?
Didn't matter. Faced with this unknown social threat, the frog fell back on instinct.
"Yyyyyyyup," answered 'Ribbit' casually. "Long time no see, guys!"
She didn't know any of these fucking people.
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(But already — in the obscure depths of her heart — she'd begun looking for someone who wasn't there. As she always did.)
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14 Days Until Juggalo March on Washington
17 Days Until Singularity Point