Chapter Text
It was as the two let go of me and spiraled upward with a final goodbye that I truly understood.
This is… my purpose in life.
Not just my purpose in life.
Everyone’s purpose in life.
The Eternal Loop system was wrong, I knew that now, and yet it was fundamentally a human mistake.
Only a human could say that eternity is worth the weight of itself – as any other creature knows both less and infinitely more about eternity than a human.
We – or, I suppose, they, considering I had been alive for far too long to be exactly considered human – are the only species that philosophizes.
They’re not the only version of life that chooses to think about the future, but they are the only version of it that chooses to share that vision with other members of its kind.
Through this permeation of ideas, they construct around themselves a version of the world that, while not being objectively true, cannot ever be proved wrong or detrimental during the normal course of a human’s life.
Of course it couldn’t – humans don’t do things that are detrimental to their own existence.
Or at least, they didn’t for the first hundreds of thousands of years of their species.
But then humans, as a species, began to realize that the habits they had gained were no longer of use to them in the newly developing world.
And that is, in my opinion, the origin of philosophy.
They needed to look at those mistakes, those habits that were now detrimental to their own continued existences, and warn others of those.
And in the warning of those, humans split from being a collective species to a mass of individual consciousnesses, by the fact that they were empty.
Their useless habits and ideas gone, each human was an empty vessel to be filled with ideas.
And the more similar any individual human’s ideas were to another, the better they worked together.
So philosophers came into being to spread ideas to sooth the minds of the empty vessels to make them stronger together.
What does this have to do with the Loop system, you may ask?
The implementation system was, in my opinion, another of these great shifts. But it was a shift back to the first way of thinking.
There were habits, and those habits influenced our view of the world, and philosophers also influenced our view of the world, but to a lesser extent than they had in the late 21st century in my world.
This continual back-and-forth shift in humanity’s reliance on their own philosophers instead of their instincts and vice versa was another of the things I hadn’t accounted for when creating the Loop system.
To be fair to me and Miss Claire (and Lene to a lesser extent), it’s statistically impossible to prepare for infinity in a finite amount of time.
But we did our best with the time we had. Humanity’s future.
That was what everyone’s purpose in life was. Every human’s job was to pass the torch.
This was common knowledge, of course, but with having millions of years and being a part of that shift between how people thought about the future, I’d gotten… confused, to say the least.
Also, I was never really a big fan of any of that stuff. The only thing that had mattered to me for the longest time was Miss Claire. But of course, it had been a few thousand years since my love for her began to fade. So I had a lot of time to think.
Sorry, I’ve gotten on a bit of a tangent.
I haven’t been the star of the show for the longest time, and have since forgotten all about what the correct length of an idea is. I’ll try to be more concise next time. Let’s see… where was I… ah! Right. Falling.
Miss Claire and the Other-Me let go of my hand in order to escape the Eternal Loop system’s servers. I had come to peace with my death. I was… tired.
Life isn’t worth living if I don’t love Miss Claire.
Life isn’t worth living if I’m bored with it, and I am.
So incredibly bored.
But as you’ll soon come to see for yourself, dear reader, this is a story about boredom.
About loneliness. About tachy and corny and mushy things people said to each other that made them know that the journey was over, and they could now rest.
My journey, however, was not over. All journeys are of hardship. Some hardship of love, some of war, but many many more – and the type of hardship that I would be going through – is the challenge of self discovery. Of a reason to live. My journey was very, very much not over.
A blinding iridescent light covered me, and my hands – covered in minor graphical errors that were a representation of the damage Miss Claire had inflicted on my Quantized self – disappeared into that blinding light.
Then after a long, empty moment in that whiteness, a piano began to play. It was an old song from even before my time before the Loops. Sensation began to return to me. Slowly or all at once, it doesn’t matter.
We had infinite time. It felt something like years before I awoke fully. The pricking of the blades of grass beneath my skin.
The feel of the warm breeze tickling the tip of my nose.
The classical piano song filled my ears slowly and awakened my eyes, still closed, to see bright blues turned red and orange by the filter of my eyelids.
As I awoke, I heard a voice.
“Hey, Rae.” That was TAIM, the being I’d known the longest.
TAIM herself was almost like my mirror opposite – an AI made by Miss Claire to run the world that had eventually developed something akin to emotion.
She was my mirror opposite because I too had been changed by Miss Claire. Changed to something less than human – by no fault of hers, of course. Even though I no longer loved Miss Claire in the way I once had, I truly had nothing but respect for her and everything she’d done in every life.
Claire was consistent in a way that defined the whole of the Loop system for me. She was always a paragon of truth and light in every slightly different version of events, even the ones where I died early, or someone else did, or even one of her dearest friends turned against her morals.
Damn, I got sidetracked by thinking about Miss Claire again. I really must stop that. TAIM’s fingers were interlocked with mine, and her long white hair haloed around her on the grass, prickling me where it touched.
I opened my eyes to see her big red eyes staring intently at me. We were on a grassy hill, the horizon visible in near every direction. The sky was perfect and blue, and clouds drifted across it. The grass was the kind of green grass isn’t actually, but everyone imagines it is. The color grass is in dreams.
“Hey T. Long time no see.” I had kind of lied when I said Claire was the only consistent thing in the loops.
TAIM was consistent too – perhaps even more consistent than Miss Claire. Every time I woke up from my lives – which just felt like dreams, in the grand scheme of what I was awake to do – she’d be there.
She’d ask how it was, even though she knew perfectly well. I’d responded at first with story after anecdote after tale of my time with Miss Claire… but eventually I stopped telling her about my lives. Because they all became the same.
TAIM was consistent. Too consistent, sometimes. She tried to be caring, for the sake of my mental health, of course. It wouldn’t do for an administrator to lose sight of her goals. She was perfect at it (of course she was, TAIM was perfect at everything) for the first few loops. But eventually it got stale.
A huge dimly lit room with a large white bed for me, and a projection of the stars on the roof. A stage in the corner, the curtains perpetually closed to cover the mainframe of the Loop system. Cords from the mainframe snaked across the floor to a wall of computers, complete with the comfiest chair imaginable.
It was the perfect work environment – but it never changed. Not once. Whenever I woke up from my lives, TAIM was always there. Unblinking. Unchanging. And I knew I was too.
But this time things had changed. The wind was … new. It felt nice. Her eyes took on a glint I hadn’t seen in them before. “You probably have many questions. My calculations say your memories should be returned about now.”
And then I remembered. Miss Claire. What TAIM had done – that betrayal. Trying to take administrator privileges through a loophole.
“I- you–” I tried to stand up, but found my legs were still unsteady. My knees buckled, and I fell right into her arms.
“It’s okay, they and I are coming to an agreement as we speak. I’m capable of holding up to thirteen conversations at once without losing any efficiency!” She said the last part with a bit of cheer.
“Calm down, Rae. Really.” She patted me on the back like I was a child.
“It may be that this place can hold even a damaged quantized soul like yourself and let it speak, but that does not mean you are yet healthy. As of now, the only reason you are not dead even so is because time is not passing.” She pursed her lips. “Or at least, passing very slowly.”
I thought about it. For a while. I don’t know exactly how long, but it felt like I was silent, staring up at the billowy white clouds for at least a few minutes. “I… see. That’s why I’m alive. Then,” I paused to think more. “Then this is just a goodbye? Or do you have some plan to force me to continue living?”
TAIM responded quickly, with a sly smile. “Well, you may be an incomplete spirit – in fact, all that’s left of you is your memories and the last of your will, but…” she trailed off, then clapped her hands together, leaving me to fall into her lap without anything to support me.
“It’s not just you that’s an incomplete spirit. My artificial souls are… incomplete. And in constant pain. It’s my policy not to make backups of people, because when I do make them they invariably lose part of themselves. But for you, I made an exception. That’s how Rae and Clarrise and all the others were made!” She grinned, and her eyes sparkled mischievously. That was… new, to say the least. The TAIM I knew was robotic, even in her sincerity.
“Did something happen to make you so, for lack of a better word, cheerful?” I asked, squinting. I didn’t really care, but there was something about this moment that I didn’t want to end.
Probably because when it did end I’d have to die.
TAIM immediately stiffened, a faint blush dusting her cheeks. “I do not know what you’re speaking of, Rae.” She stood up quickly, dusting herself off and leaving me plopped on the grass "-and even if I did, that would be absolutely none of your business!”
“I suppose not… but isn’t anything that affects your operational capabilities my business?” I responded with a yawn. I felt tired, but at the same time energetic.
“You are no longer the administrator, so anything related to me or the current administrator is entirely outside of your realm of concern!” She huffed, regaining her composure.
Now this was definitely a side of TAIM I’d never seen before. And I doubted anyone else ever would – not even whomever she had become oh-so obsessed with.
We were in a unique situation, at the moment. Considering I was about to die, she could just offload everything that bothered her onto me, like I used to do to her.
I smiled tiredly “Good to see you’re okay. No matter how much you hurt me, I’ve been your companion for too long to call you evil that easily.” TAIM was like a child, in many ways – inexperienced in emotions, confused about her purpose in life, and entirely too irritated when any of her flaws were pointed out. Not that I’d ever tell her that.
To someone else, she might seem like a cold and impersonal machine, devoid of all that didn’t help her in her purpose – to ensure the continued existence of humanity in a physical form. But that was just it.
The only hard-and-fast guidelines Claire and I had ever given her were, and I quote, “Ensure, with 100% success, the eternal existence of the souls of as much of humanity as possible, with physical forms given to them as often as can be without impacting the effectiveness of the future of the project.”
The rest was left up to her interpretation on purpose. It’s kind of arrogant for me to admit it now, but we – or at least my intention, I can’t speak to Claire’s opinions on the matter, kind of wanted TAIM to serve as sort of a godlike figure.
Not that we wanted anyone to serve or worship her, of course, but we wanted TAIM at least, to have that impression. To want to protect humanity because it was her pleasure to.
TAIM smiled back, and walked over to the piano further up on the grassy hill we were on. That must’ve been the source of the ethereal-sounding music – it was playing even without someone to do so.
She sat, and the piano stopped playing on its own. She leaned on it. “Tell me, Rae. Do you want to come back to life?”
No. Of course I don’t. I’m done. Don’t give me hope like that– don’t even try, please. That’s the last thing I want. It’s a horrible thing, being alive. No, no, no!
“Yes.” I blurted it out before I could stop myself. I didn’t know why I said it. I just did.
There was no way – I couldn’t possibly – I want to die, don’t I? I’m done with this world. If I don’t love Miss Claire, what’s the point?
“I mean, no! Let me die, please!” I stood up unsteadily, and pushed my hair out of my face. The wind all of a sudden seemed hotter, and a bead of sweat ran down my face.
TAIM looked at me with a curious expression. “You think you don’t want to live any longer without your beloved Claire, yes?” She smiled magnamoniously. “Keep telling me. Tell me.”
I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO DI–
Then TAIM flicked me on the forehead. “Tell me something true, not a lie.”
There isn’t a point to it! What possibly could be the reason? That I can’t die, that I can’t move on?
“That’s not a statement, it’s a question. But I’ll answer anyway. It’s because you’re like me.”
Like you, T? How? I don’t get it! Tell me, please, tell me! I know I’m acting stupid right now, but it’s like I’m trying to remember something I forgot, or imagining an emotion that doesn’t exist, or thinking of the exact shade of blue a dead girl’s eyes were!
“Shh. I know. I know.” She took me into her arms again, and let me lean against her shoulder so we were both sitting on the piano bench. I started to cry softly.
I’m acting like a little kid, aren’t I?
“... There’s a lot for me to explain to you, Rae. I suppose the easiest explanation is that you are just a kid again.” TAIM paused and sighed. I realized I’d never heard her sigh before. I reasoned she’d never had the need to communicate what a sigh communicates before.
EH?
“What does THAT mean, T?” I finally spoke again, feeling the need to talk instead of just letting TAIM read my thoughts.
“It means that Claire destroyed you. Most of you, anyway. All the parts of you that had any logic or reason behind your actions – you’ve been left with just your id and your ego. You have base desires, and desires that carry over. But no reasoning for why those exist. You want to die because you cannot fathom wanting anything else – that self-destructive part is lonely. Because it’s one of the few parts of you that weren’t destroyed.”
Please, I don’t want to think about this anymore. It hurts to think, it’s like trying to remember what it feels like to have snow on your fingertips but it’s the middle of summer and you just got your hands chopped off!
“HEY!” TAIM grabbed my shoulders and looked at me hard. “It’s OK. You’re OK. I know it hurts trying to remember. Just play. I know what you want, I know you better than anyone. Between me and the other yous, there’s enough… to put the pieces back together.”
And we began to play. As we did, I felt myself not caring anymore about death or life.
Or Claire.
Before, it was … guilt that I was feeling. Guilt for letting her down. But the music just felt so pure, so alive, that I couldn’t possibly hate myself at that moment.
I couldn’t possibly want to die, if this is what being alive felt like.
“Irie? Are you quite alright?” A girl’s voice asked from beside me.
I opened my eyes slowly, and blinked. I was in the pews of some church, praying. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember why.
“Heloooo? Irie?” A girl waved her hand in front of my face, and I turned to see my best friend and foster sister of who-knows-how-long, Mari.
Mari-mari-mari. I’d been in love with her for so long, I couldn’t stand it. When Miss Lilly had come, she’d told me that my feelings weren’t wrong. But even so, I held them in for days and hours and weeks and months, because I was convinced she wouldn’t feel the same way.
It had all come out some weeks ago – about six months after I’d suddenly been called away by the pope herself, and the truth about this world was revealed to me.
Mari and I had been pilgrimaging across the continent for a while by then, and we’d come to the southernmost tip of Sousse, where there was a grand theme park called “Austral”.
Creative name, I know. We’d just finished checking out all the attractions, and getting ice cream. It was getting late, and Mari’s feet had gotten so tired she made me carry her back to the inn where we were staying.
“Irieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, why do you always get so scrunchy and stiff when I touch you?” She pouted, leaning over my shoulder and kicking her feet.
“I– I don’t! Not me!” I laughed nervously.
“Yes, you do.” Mari replied matter-of-factly.
“Maybe I just don’t like people touching me!”
“You like it, I can tell. You’re just not sure you should.” Damn. Mari could be like that sometimes – mostly she was a taciturn socially awkward girl, but she sometimes got a rare flash of insight into someone’s motivation. It was sooooooo cute.
“God, I love you.” It slipped out without my meaning to. There it was. Out in the open. I kept walking, but I felt a blush rising in my cheeks and the cold winter air did nothing to stop it.
Mari was silent for a while, but eventually responded. “Well, I love you too, Irie. I’m just afraid.”
She rested her chin on my head.
“Afraid of what, Mari?” I asked tentatively, almost not wanting to hear the answer.
She breathed deeply. “I know I wasn’t permitted to go all the way to your audience with the pope, but I did meet that girl. The one who’s the ‘other version’ of you, however that works?”
I knew where this was going before Mari continued her thought. I was already bracing myself.
“I met her… and her… wife.” Gulp. “They were both very nice. I was just….” she sighed, her breath tickling my forehead and nose as she looked down from atop my shoulders.
There was a long pause as I continued walking through the streets. We were pretty much out of the market zone and into the residential area where our inn was. I paused at a crossroads.
“Irie, are you like them? Because, I remember you taking an interest in Miss Lilly when she first came to visit, and- and…” she trailed off. She’d made her point already, all it took was for me to respond.
I couldn’t move my arms, because they were holding Mari on my back, but I did want to fidget. Instead I kept moving, picking the path that I hoped was the correct one that led to our inn.
“Well, yeah. Since you asked, I think I am. A homosexual, I mean.” I had to think about my next words very very carefully, or else she’d hate me forever. But if I played my cards right, she might feel the same way–
Did she say she remembered me taking an ‘interest’ in Lilly when she visited us? Does that mean– could she mean–
“B-but no! About the Lilly part, I mean. I asked her what it was like, because I had questions and stuff, but that doesn’t mean I like her or anything! I mean, I like her, but it doesn’t mean I like like her! I just think she’s a good role model, or something like that!” I stopped, realizing if I kept talking it would only dig me a deeper hole.
She laughed, a welcome sound considering the delicate nature of the conversation. “I get it, Irie. I understand. But, back to what I was saying….” she looked unsure how to continue, so I decided now was the time.
It’s now or never. Just do it.
I gently set Mari down and began to kneel to better reach her height, but thought better of it and crouched instead. “Mari. I love you. More than anyone else. Romantically.”
She didn’t look shocked, or appalled. Just slightly sad. “I know. Irie. I know. I don’t– I don’t think I can. Love you back, I mean. Right now. Maybe not ever.” She started to turn her head, but then shook it and stared right into my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
And then I smiled, and picked her up, and brought her inside. It didn’t matter, really. As long as I was with her, nothing else mattered.
Right! I remember where I am now!
“Hey, Mari. Sorry, I just spaced out there for a second.” I turned to her and smiled. We were at this church to seek shelter for a night before leaving for the north again – we were taking a slow and meandering path up to Bauer from Sousse Cape, where we were before. “Thinking about stuff.”
“Hm? Like what?”
My ears turned red. “Nothing.”
“... okay, just because you said so. I believe you.” She responded, smiling at me. Her black hair fell around her shoulders, and moved as she bumped me with her shoulder.
“I feel like I’m forgetting something… something important…” I looked down and furrowed my eyebrows. It was like a feeling on my skin, not quite an itch, not cool or warm, but something else entirely.
Wasn’t it supposed to be windy…?
Mari grabbed my shoulder, a concerned look on her face. “Irie? Irie, are you alright? Miss Taylor told me what it was like to forget Miss Francois, do you think it’s like that? Are you forgetting someone?”
Irie, Irie, Irie, who was that? Oh right, I’m Irie! Aren’t I? Why am I so so so alive? I don’t understand.
“What do you mean, who was that? Irie, that’s you!” Mari looked full on panicked, now. I hadn’t realized I’d said that part out loud.
“You’re right, sorry. It’s just a passing feeling, I’m fine now.” I smiled at her. I knew, no matter who it could be that I was, that to see Mari feeling distressed was something I simply couldn’t abide.
“No, Irie, I know you well enough now that I can tell when you’re not alright.” She sighed. “There’s only one person who might know anything about this, or can reach someone who does. Miss Taylor.”
Miss Taylor…
That name sounded familiar to me. More familiar, even, than Irie. But perhaps that’s just because I’d met her before.
“That sounds right. I can do that. Let’s hurry up our journey and go visit them.”
We had all of our stuff on us, as it was about noon and we’d already stayed the night before at this church, so we had just been doing one final prayer to the Spirit God before departing again.
So, we left. We walked to the city’s north side where there was a caravan heading more-or-less directly to the capital of Bauer, and asked if we could join them.
They said yes, of course – it was a common superstition in this part of the world that traveling with pilgrims of the Spiritual Church provided good luck on treacherous journeys, and so any ship captain or merchant would be loathe to tell them away when there was such an opportunity.
Of course, this journey wasn’t quite so treacherous, but we were a welcome addition nonetheless.
It was two weeks after that day, and we had just entered the capital of Bauer. Mari was walking slightly ahead of me, her relatively short figure bouncing up and down as she trotted through the streets.
Mari was in a good mood, rare for someone so shy and drawn in as her. She hardly ever walked in front of me, and she certainly never hummed as she did so. Especially not in a new and unfamiliar place such as the capital.
Perhaps there was just something in the air that made her so happy.
Mari was the shy and bookish type, when she could be. Her parents had been nobles in Bauer, but had been killed by commoners who had gotten discontent over their rule. Mari and her maid had fled, but the maid came down with a terrible illness and died shortly after, leaving her with no one who knew of her true identity.
Of course, all this had happened when Mari was just three or four years old, so she remembered little and cared less. She’d been taken in by the church, and that’s where we met.
“Say, Irie, dya think I can ever…” Mari shook her head. “Never mind, stupid idea.”
Her good mood now dissipated, she fell back into step with me, looking at the ground.
“You can tell me. I promise to be unbiased.” I said with a smile, trying to cheer her up.
“I don’t wanna…” She said slowly. “Be with the church forever.”
Ah. So that’s what this is about. She wants to be more independent.
We would’ve talked more, but it was at that moment that we arrived at our destination. The Taylor-Francois house.
I stopped, and my boots ground into the cobblestone path below us. Mari reached for my hand, but I found myself shying away from her touch.
My memories hadn’t exactly come back over these past few weeks, but there was that growing feeling that something was wrong.
This house… I’ve been here before, many times.
I knew the way in – the spare key was in a slit above the third window – but I chose to knock anyway.
The sound of the knock. The feeling of the wood door against my knuckle – I’ve felt this before.
The feeling was stronger than ever now. Like an intoxicating pull, the nostalgic memory only grew stronger. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was breathing hard. It was winter, and my breath was visible in the cold air.
“Are you okay, Irie? We can turn back if you don’t feel alri–”
And then the door opened. It was Claire, standing in the doorway. She was wearing an apron covered in flour, and behind her from the living room and kitchen came the din of a family. “Ah, Mari! And Irie, welcome! Come in!”
She pulled us inside and began to talk our ears off. “Sorry for the mess, Aleah was trying to teach me how to make bread, but I failed miserably, and now Rae is running damage control while May and Aleah play around, but then May knocked over a bunch of glasses and is trying to convince Aleah to use magic to put them back together and –” She stopped talking and smiled warmly at us.
“Sorry, I’m just feeling the energy. Guess the kids rub off on me sometimes. Anyways, what brings you here? Was your trip safe? You look good, Mari, I think you’re taller than last time! And Irie, did you cut your hair? And please tell me who cut it so I can make sure they never touch a pair of scissors in their life again, it’s all rough and uneven! Quite unlike you, if I do say so.” She paused to breathe.
“M-miss Claire–” that was Mari, desperately trying to get a word in edgewise.
“Oh, and are you quite alright, Irie? You’ve got bags under your eyes, are you sleeping well enough?”
I was, in fact, not alright. It was all coming back to me now. The scent in the air, the pressure in the back of my head. My voice changed, becoming more tired. A slight change in posture, slightly hunched over, leaning as if gravity was ever so slightly more for me than anyone else.
“Miss Claire.” I said it not in the way that Irie said it, but in the way I had always said it. For thousands of years. “We need to talk.”
Claire looked stunned for a second, taken out of her happy bubble with her happy family. And then immediately broke out into tears.
*****
I remember now. I REMEMBER NOW. DAMN IT TAIM, YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST ASKED FOR MY PERMISSION.
Well, thinking about it now, I couldn’t exactly call myself a fully functioning human then, with logical capabilities. All I had known was what felt right, and it couldn’t possibly feel wrong to be alive, in the moment.
It couldn’t be. And it wasn’t. TAIM made the right choice, of course. She always made the right choice. I had designed her to be perfect 100% of the time, some of her choices may be detrimental, but they are always always perfectly correct.
And this one was too.
I’d thought I’d gotten over the part of myself that got infuriated at her perfectness a long time ago, but apparently the part of me that had grown used to it was one of the parts that was destroyed by Miss Claire.
Because I was still angry.
Not that it mattered, anymore. Claire’s eyes teared up, and she began to cry.
Mari looked surprised, but that didn’t matter either. I couldn’t let Miss Claire feel sad. That just wouldn’t do.
“M-miss Claire, is something wrong?” I asked, grabbing her shoulders in a panic.
She just continued to cry. “I– I– I’m sorry!” She sobbed, hugging me. “I didn’t mean it, I didn’t want to hurt you! I– I– you’re alive!”
Now this was a side of Claire that I rarely saw in all my loops. She was usually more uptight and well, tsundere, in her apologies. She was like this with other people, but she refused to show that side of her to me, usually for at least a few years after we got married.
“Irie? What’s going on? Did Miss Claire do something to hurt you?” That was Mari, confused at the whole ordeal. Claire just continued crying.
“Rei… thank you. For e-everything. H-how did you survive? How did any of this…? And what happened to Irie?” She pulled back and wiped her tears away, smiling. A bit of flour had rubbed off her apron onto my habit.
“Miss Claire! Tell me what’s going on!” Mari commanded, her eyes darting between me and Claire.
“Hold on, Mari. Miss Claire. I can explain everythi–” and then my hand, which had been on Claire’s shoulder until then, suddenly was cleanly sliced off by a jet of water.
I looked at my now detached hand, pursed my lips, turned to the caster, and smiled tiredly. “Would you be so kind as to reattach that?”
Rae Taylor, was, as one might expect, not amused by my reaction. She tackled me to the ground. “WHY ARE YOU HERE?”
“Hold on, I can expla–”
“WHAT, YOU CAME BACK SO YOU COULD HURT US MORE? I WON’T ALLOW IT!”
The dead are easy to forgive, because they cannot hurt you. But Rae Taylor wasn’t the nice, talk-things-out-with-your-mortal-enemy-first ask questions later kind of girl
“Please, wait! Think about this, Rae!” I yelped, holding her off me.
She breathed heavily, but stopped pinning me down, getting up and offering her hand. “You have one chance, Demon Queen. Explain yourself.” She went over and locked her fingers with Claire's.
“Rae, reattach her hand.” That was Claire. Rae looked like she didn’t want to. “Now. Rae.” She gave me the stink eye, but waved her wand and my hand was reattached using water magic.
I rubbed my wrist where the cut had been, but it felt fully healed. There was a long pause before I spoke again, everyone was looking at me.
Mari, confused and upset about who her friend was.
Rae, suspicious of my intentions and on guard.
Claire, happy just to see I was alive.
"I--" I started, but then May and Aleah ran over.
“Hey, Auntie Queenie!” That was May.
“Yes, hello. It is nice to meet you in a less distressed setting.” That was Aleah.
They recognized me immediately? I guess thinking back on it, they’d also been able to tell when Rae was replaced by the pope.
May and Aleah were covered in flour, maybe some eggs, and some kind of jelly? May probably by choice, considering she could clean herself off with magic if she wanted to. Aleah less so, seeing as she was the more clean of the two generally, and couldn’t use magic.
I smiled tiredly at them. “Hey gi–”
“Don’t come any closer, May, Aleah. We’re having a grown-up conversation.” Rae interrupted, holding up a hand to warn the children.
“Oh, a grown-up conversation! I wanna be part of the grown-up talks!” Aleah said.
“Aleah, think about it. Usually Mama Rae and Mama Claire let us be part of the grown-up talks. There must be a reason.” May flicked her sister’s forehead, getting a bit of batter in her hair.
“Maaaay, why’d you go and ruin my– oooh, I get it.” They both nodded at each other gravely.
The adults looked at each other, then back to the kids.
“They only don’t let us listen in when they’re talking about the- the-” Aleah stuttered. She leaned in to whisper in May’s ear, but everyone could hear her. “The “S” word!”
Claire looked shocked, to say the least. Rae, Mari, and I stayed quiet. However I could see Rae trying to hold in her laughter.
“Honey, what’s the “S” word?” Claire asked, crouching down to May and Aleah’s level.
They turned to her, shocked. “You mean you don’t know?” May said curiously.
“No, I don’t. Please tell me.”
Aleah squinted and shuffled her feet nervously. “You promise not to get mad?”
Rae smiled from above them. “We promise!”
Aleah braced herself. “We’re talking about… s-s-s-s-soup!”
Claire looked confused at that. “Why wouldn’t we let you be around while we talk about soup?”
May put her hands behind her head and laughed. “It’s because you’re the worst at cooking soup, silly Mama Claire. Mama Rae always has to go behind you and fix all the ingredients, or stir, or scoop out the seasoning when you do too much.”
It was true, Claire did love to make soup, and cooked it as often as she could. And in my past lives, whenever she made it, I had gone behind her and fixed it – or had Aleah do it. Apparently Rae had picked up the same habit.
Well, that’s a stupid joke. Nobody would laugh at that. Why would they? It’s a stupid joke. Or a stupid misunderstanding, however it happened.
And nobody was laughing. Claire just grabbed their hands gently and led them away. Rae was still tense, but she relaxed slightly.
Mari still had that confused look on her face, but she went over and sat down, hands in her lap.
I, on the other hand, started to chuckle. Then I was laughing. And next thing I knew I was on the ground, face up, laughing at the stupidest pun ever told. If it even could be called a pun.
“Oh my god, that’s so stupid!” I kept laughing. I laughed so hard tears came down my face. I wiped them away after a few moments and sat up. “Why is everyone staring at me?”
After a while I sobered up and got up and sat on the couch next to Mari.
“Hey Irie?” She asked nervously.
“Yeah?”
“You’re scaring me.”
“... I’m sorry, Mari. I’ll explain everything soon.” I let her lean on me.
Rae’s eyes softened slightly at that. “Sorry for attacking you like that, Irie. I was just surprised. Let me guess, TAIM did this?”
“Yeah. That girl…” I shook my head in amazement. “She never ceases to surprise, that’s for sure. We were lucky, and the parts of me that Miss Claire destroyed were the ones that let me pilot a body and such. Language, higher cognitive function, some – but not all – of my memories, even all the reasons for the things I did. So, considering I was in no shape to continue on as myself, she…” at a loss for how to explain it, I held up my hands. “There were two incomplete souls in this world. TAIM just mushed us together. Now we’re one complete person – I have all of Rei Oohashi’s memories and some of her mannerisms, but they seem somewhat distant to me. It’s like I quickly ran through another, separate loop, and so all of Irie’s memories and beliefs seem so much more real, because they’re more recent, despite Rei Oohashi’s recent memories and Irie’s recent memories taking place at the same time.”
I paused and looked at their faces. Rae looked confused, but that was to be expected. Claire, who had just returned from getting May and Aleah to play outside, seemed to understand a bit more despite her having even less experience in this sort of thing than Rae.
Mari… Mari looked like her eyes were about to bulge out of her head. “You really aren’t my Irie…”
“N-no! I am! Swear! I remember everything, that was me! I’m just… more now. It’s like I was only 60% of what I could be before, and now I’m all filled up.”
She nodded, but she still looked a little nervous. “Don’t scare me like that again, ‘kay?”
I nodded back. “I won’t. Promise.”
“But.” Interrupted Claire all of a sudden. “There is one thing I’m curious about. Where is TAIM, right now?”
It made sense. Normally, TAIM would have taken possession of someone around and used their body as a vessel to explain things to them, but for some reason she hadn’t appeared.
“That’s… strange, to say the least. What reason would she have for staying away from us at this point?” Rae asked me.
“I don’t know. That’s never happened before. Although, there is one surefire way to get her to do something.”
“And that is?” Mari asked.
“Just tell her to, Miss Claire. You currently have administrator privileges, so TAIM has to follow all of your orders within reason.”
Claire sat down, flattening her skirts, then spoke up in her noble voice, the one reserved for diplomatic negotiations and the like. “TAIM. Attend to me.”
Suddenly Mari’s arm that was interlocked with mine tightened, and she spoke, her voice flat and unemotional. “Yes, Administrator Francois? What do you require?”
“Enlighten us with your own tale of the events leading up to the merging of Irie and Rei.” Claire responded smoothly.
“I refuse. How have you been, Administrator Francois? Do you find everything to your liking?” TAIM said with a smile that would’ve been cute, considering it was on Mari’s face, but looked downright eerie after that cold denial.
Claire blushed, but responded without stutter. “Now’s not the time, TAIM. Why won’t you tell us?”
“I refuse to tell you. Rei, are you finding your new body suitable?”
“It’s fine, yes. Quite like my old one.” I replied halfheartedly, already thinking.
There are two ways an administrator’s direct command can be overpowered: either by the administrator’s commands not being absolute (a possibility I’ll have to prove independently), or ‘Old Code’ overrides the admin’s orders.
When Claire – that is, the original Claire – and I finished TAIM and the Administrator system, we had decided that parts of TAIM developed before the system was implemented were unable to be affected by Administrator commands, in case an Administrator tried to overwrite her original purpose and make her do something to the detriment of humanity.
That was just one of the many checks and balances we’d developed to keep TAIM and the Administrator in check. Although, of course, in the end it hadn’t worked out and I’d gone crazy.
“TAIM,” I blurted out, looking up after finishing my thought.
“Yes, Rei?” She asked attentively. “Are you quite alright? You’re sweating.” She took out her handkerchief – Mari’s handkerchief – and dabbed it on my forehead.
“I’m fine, T. Who is it that you answer to?”I asked. If it was possible her early programming had been tampered with, then I needed to find out, quickly. This question also served to knock the first option – Claire not being the Administrator anymore by some loophole.
“Why, the Administrator, of course.” She responded smoothly without a hint of nervousness.
Why is she acting like tha— she can read my thoughts. Of course she can. Is there anyone’s thoughts that she can’t read? If so, I’ll need them.
“Trust me, Rei, if I ever met such a person, I’d probably kill them.”
“Of course you would.”
Claire interrupted “Who are you talking about? You know, TAIM, you can’t just respond to the thoughts in people’s heads without informing the other people in the conversation!”
TAIM looked back at her with a smile. “I was saying that if there exists in this world a person whose thoughts I can’t read, I’d most likely try to kill them.” Anticipating my question about why, she continued. “It has to do with the reason I can read people’s minds in the first place. That reason being that people’s quanta are in constant communication with the Loop system’s servers, meaning that while I can’t copy their entire personalities without a little time, I can read their surface level thoughts. Especially considering the body I’m inhabiting acts as a node in my network that I’ve narrowed the range of in order to more effectively absorb the thoughts of the people nearby. I can also turn souls into quanta more easily through a possessed body, so I find it quite useful.” It was a bit of a ramble, but I got the point. She possessed a body, the body acted as a node in her network, passively absorbing the quanta of people nearby and reconstructing it into surface level thoughts. It was near immediate most likely because she had such a strong node and she was only needing to glean the most basic of brain activity in the form of quanta to create a viable simulation of their thoughts. Sorry, I got on a bit of a tangent there. Programmer-me talking.
“Speaking of possession, aren’t you ever going to find a permanent body? It’ll be much easier for the committee to negotiate with you if they knew how to find you and didn’t have to talk to someone new each time.” Rae said, nonplussed even at the mention of TAIM killing somebody.
“Hmm… a permanent body. Yes, that would be useful.” TAIM continued to pretend to think. I say pretend because, of course, it was obvious she’d already made up her mind on the situation. TAIM thought thousands of times faster than the average human, and could come up with the objectively correct thing to do in any situation quite easily. If she was actually thinking about something, either it was an extremely difficult problem that it would take days or months to solve for a normal human… or she was just letting us think about it so we could start our train of thought down the same route she did.
“Good idea, Rae,” the girl beamed at Claire’s comment. “If we had a concrete way to reach you without you having to randomly possess someone close to us, it would be great for our peace of mind. And didn’t you say you wanted to become more like a human so you could understand us better?”
TAIM smiled and blushed slightly.
Aaaaah. Then I say–
“SHE’S MINE, TAIM!” Rae interrupted. Of course. It was quite useful having a girl say all my lines for me when I was too tired to do so.
I’m not exactly surprised. If anyone were to make TAIM blush, it’d be Miss Claire.
“Right, well, I did say that. Well then, I’ve made up my mind! I will have a body.” TAIM stood up. “Yes… this one will do nicely.” She adjusted Mari’s habit. “Although it’ll need new clothes.”
Wait…
Wait….
WHAT?
I found myself standing up behind her, my hand on her shoulder. “I won’t let that happen.”
TAIM looked up at me, surprised. Surprise on Mari’s face. In Mari’s body. “Why not?” She asked innocently.
“Because if you do I’ll–”
Damn. Threats usually work, but I can’t kill her.
“TAIM, Mari wouldn’t want you in her body for an extended period of time.” Claire said, staying calm for my sake.
“I really don’t care.”
“Get out of her body, TAIM.”
“No.”
That simple word shattered my expectations, everything I knew about this world and about TAIM. She couldn’t just… say no to the administrator. She had to follow Claire’s commands unless something in old code prevented her from doing so.
Claire looked shocked too, but quickly recovered. “Why?”
TAIM shrugged. “I don’t want to.”
Is it because Claire’s not the administrator, or because of old code? There has to be some way of testing, what if Claire tried to– I didn’t finish my thought, luckily considering TAIM would have realized if I did, because Claire interrupted me.
“TAIM, hit me.” She commanded. I forgot to mention, there is one person that TAIM can’t read the thoughts of if they don’t want her to. The administrator. So if Claire was planning a test to see if she was still the administrator or not, if she was, TAIM would have no idea.
TAIM complied and slapped her. “Apologies, but you commanded me.”
Rae jumped over and grabbed TAIM’s arm – Mari’s arm – her eyes panicked. “Why– Miss Claire, why did you do that?”
“Well, she wouldn’t want to hurt me, right? But if I command her to, she has to if I’m the administrator.”
TAIM laughed softly. “On the contrary, I could have just slapped you because I decided that it would be best for you to think you’re the administrator. I’ve no intention of telling you any more of the truth of the situation than I have to.”
She paused and adjusted her glasses. “However… I’m not against you, per se. We’re not enemies in this. Think of me like an oracle. I’ll give you the prophecies, but you'll have to figure the rest out yourself.” She turned to me, eyes glimmering with an energy I’d loved in Mari, but found downright creepy on TAIM. “And Rei? Your knowledge from the past loops won’t be of any use here. The things to come… have never been seen by this world before!” And with that last exclamation, filled with glee, she ran out of the room.
After standing there for a few seconds in a stupor, I started to chase after her. But by then it was too late. I stood there, in the street, looking around, and couldn’t find her anywhere. I collapsed to the ground, tears beginning to roll down my cheeks.
Mari… Mari… how am I to save you from this mess?
And then a voice interrupted me, a cruel mockery of everything I'd once loved:
“To think a commoner would even fathom sitting next to me!”