The next instant the girl in front of me changed to another woman. Proud had been replaced by a woman who was slightly taller, the medium length green hair was now a long blue, the side ribbon was now a red bow on the back, and the tight black body suit was now white, hugging a body as every bit as attractive as the former. Though the appearance was in a way completely different, it was the same in its strange divine beauty, and the single infinity symbol on her cheek.
For a moment I was a bit stunned, but then I realized what it was. The realization gave me a calm control as it finally made sense. It was kind of simple, though maybe that’s the way truths were. “I am crazy, aren’t I?” I laughed at myself. Hmm, well that is a relief. Maybe being crazy isn’t that bad if at least I have a hot girl along with my visions. I started laughing at the ceiling. Maybe being crazy was actually kind of fun. I was kind of tired of being responsible. If this is what it is like, I’ll enjoy my new state quite a bit. This was going to be fun, being crazy.
She shook her head ‘no’. “Not in the slightest.” I sat there staring at this woman, whose words I believed more than my thin, slipping grip on reality when she said, “That’s why I chose you.”
“Chose me?”
“Yes, chose you. Was I not clear? Do I need to change my pronunciation or voice?” Her words were not aggressive, rather completely sincere in making sure I understood.
I lifted my hand, shaking it and my head ‘no’. “No, I remember you can change your voice too. I understand your words; I just don’t understand its implications.”
The blue-haired woman continued talking. “The fracture only goes so far back which limits options. In terms of acting agents, there were only a few choices, and if you can believe it, you prove to be the most accepting and the fastest remedy.”
I understood the words she physically spoke, but I had no clue as to what exactly she was trying to say. I was looking at her when the next instant she went back to the typical Proud appearance. I closed my eyes. “Damn, can you stop that? Unless this is part of your mission to see how much I can take before I go crazy and kill myself or something. Probably would not take much to push me over the edge, literally.”
A dark thought suddenly came over me. My friend had committed suicide, and I know a lot of former employees were dead. Was this – ‘this’ being the possible succubus in front of me – the reason? This might be nothing more than some sort of military psyche test of Solarian breaking points. ReCorp’s purpose was actually setting up these dastardly tests. Eliminate the ability to leave the planet, then test everyone until they eventually succumb.
I opened my narrowed eyes at her. Yeah she was up to something. Damn, what a rough test: get the most beautiful girl you can to see if you can crack a Solarian. Yes, you can, and it often was not that hard.
A new voice broke my concentration. “Uh, are you okay? Here are your drinks.” The bartender had a worried look cratered into his older face. He set them down across from me, and I noted that Proud did not physically touch anything during the placement of the drinks. Was the bartender a wayward savior on this dark path I was falling down with this girl?
“I’m fine, get out of here please.” I turned back to Proud. “I get what’s going on here, he ‘can’t see you’ supposedly, right? Is he in on this, or are you some sort of implantation device in my thought or maybe a hologram? All of them make sense, though I am going with the second simply because you seem to be tailored to my subconscious tastes.” That part was not out of the ordinary, there were a lot of forms of…entertainment…that tapped into the subconscious to edit the experience to maximum personal pleasure.
She frowned, and the motion was so genuine I felt bad for causing it. “You have dark thoughts Tre.” ‘Tre’? Hmm, never had someone shorten my name. “These are always the most painful when you decide that you would rather be suspicious of me. Oh, and yes I can understand your highest level conscious thoughts, haha!” She blushed then started laughing randomly. “Tre, naughty boy! And no I can’t control you, so don’t worry. Though it would be much easier.”
I grit my teeth together and my mouth was in a half frown. “So, what the hell is going on? I hope you can at least understand my doubtful thoughts. I am not convinced you are entirely real. At this point I am expecting anything that you tell me to do might just be a test of my morality or sanity or something.”
Proud laughed at that. “That paranoia you possess is painful, even to me it hurts. Drop that fear! True reality is joyous. Do I look scared at all right now?” Her excited personality was a bit disarming, but I had way too much on my mind to appreciate or believe it.
“No, but you don’t have me changing my appearance and appearing in your dreams. Anyway, what’s the deal? Can you tell me what is going on, or is that part of the test?”
She shook her head, her ribbon softly swaying with the movement. “No test. While unfortunately I cannot conclusively prove anything, I hope you can trust me.” She leaned back, her blue eyes looking upwards while her breasts seemed to be pointing right at me with their temptation. Okay, clearly this was some test to try to lure me in, with the whole ‘oh tee-hee I didn’t know I was flirting with him~!’ persona.
She did not say anything for a while. What the hell was she trying to ‘prove’, that her intrigue was distracting!? Of course that was obvious, but my future death was more important, no matter what she triggered in me.
Eventually she began, “I am glad I do not feel ‘annoyance’, because it would perhaps be nearly unbearable from what I understand the feeling to be. Though, I can deeply appreciate the irony of this situation, which might help alleviate the sensation.” She met my gaze then asked a simple question: “How many times do you think we have had a conversation like this?”
I was sitting there and realized I had to answer her. “Well, one. Right?” I hated I actually questioned if that was correct or not.
“No, not even close. But I do not know either, only vague conscious packets that have survived the back fracture are any indication of the vast multitude. The Emotion Field is implanted with your accruing thoughts that slowly spill backwards. This is how the back fracture is not a complete reset every time.”
I had no clue what she was talking about, so went onto something else. I was going to find a flaw in this girl’s story. “So Proud, that is your name, right?” She nodded. “If you need my help, why can’t someone like him help you?” I pointed to the bartender.
“Lacks higher-level consciousness. Just a shell, that any work laid would be lost in the fracture; amplified by an inability to detect…or perhaps an unwillingness to do so.”
“Lacks consciousness? Is he an android?”
“No, he is Solarian. Do you perhaps not understand the word? Maybe are our definitions different?”
“I don’t know; why don’t you try telling me?”
She stopped, closing her eyes. “Let me try to remember the most effective way I was able to convey this.” There was silence for a while. “To say it is complicated for your mind would be a massive understatement, but in a way perhaps it is the simplest truth. Are you familiar with the term some members of your race know as ‘Axl’?”
“No.” I could feel the situation would be one that whoever I was talking to might normally be frustrated that I was not grasping whatever experiment I was in, yet I felt only complete patience from the strange girl. I had my annoyances with her, but her tolerance was winning me over.
“Okay, well…” she paused while she thought, “your body and mind are ultimately recyclable. Your race understands this as ‘The Line’. This shouldn’t be a surprise for you. When you die, all that energy will, in one way or another, will be utilized again. However, consciousness, or maybe call it ‘high level awareness’, has a reality of its own too. It is not part of these dimensions you normally call ‘reality’. It ultimately influences this reality, but low levels or non-existence in awareness often reverses the circumstances; meaning this reality instead infl
uences the weak awareness.”
“You are kind of losing me, can you explain?”
“My last sentence was the best explanation. Essentially, at high levels of consciousness, there exists a sort of manifesting ability, whereas as low levels, reality instead changes or crushes the consciousness.” She stopped talking, waiting to see if I understood.
“Nothing real can be taken away,” I stated, recalling some philosophical thing I had heard once which seemed appropriate here; I said it more to try to pretend I knew what she was talking about than any real understanding I had of what she was saying.
Her huge grin was worth my statement as her happiness was very infectious. “Exactly, Tre! If it is there, it cannot be taken away! That is exactly why you were the one selected. Your awareness and openness targeted you out right away.” Seeing her so happy and exited made me feel a bit happy as well; I smiled at my ability to have made her happy.
“So, are you even real, or do we have some other dimensional thing going on here?”
“Oh I am real, but to drop into this dimension takes a vast amount of energy and concentration. See?” She gripped my arm hard, and it actually hurt. I had no doubt her slightly muscular arms belied massive strength that could completely crush through my arm. “But as consciousness affects your reality, this is why I am only visible to you. To influence one reality is much easier than all of them.”
“But, if I am more aware of reality, wouldn’t that make it harder for you to come here? I’d be more aware that what is going on here should not be happening in normal circumstances. Wouldn’t that guy be easier to influence or whatever?”
“Of course, but to what avail?”
She disappeared, and I sat back in surprise, looking around. The guy was watching a screen that suddenly shut off. “What the?” He sat up, slapped the screen and it fall off the counter in what seemed like excessive movement for his light touch. He swore a bit, and went to trying to fix it. Proud was back at her chair.
She gave me a girlish smile.
“So you can play tricks on some chumps?” I asked her.
“Oh, it’s much easier to influence his world, but it really has no point. I could destroy this whole building,” I felt some fear in my stomach over her talking so easily about power I could not ever hope to match, “but talking to you is much harder. Influencing your world is much more difficult, but still doable.” She nodded towards my chest, and I looked down and my white shirt was now a bright pink. “You have no idea how hard that was compared to…” she lifted her finger and waved it, as the back wall of the building fell apart into rubble.
“What the hell? You are telling me no one notices that!?” I cried in surprise.
She snapped her finger and the wall was back together. “Someone might eventually. The real take away is how variable what you think your continuous existence actually is.”
“Interesting. But how is this ‘my world’? I saw that screen you broke, so I saw ‘his world’ or whatever, and he could see this shirt for sure, so it’s hardly isolated. You are telling me everyone has their own reality, and that there isn’t a true one? I don’t buy that at all. What’s real, is real. The screen is broke, the wall was destroyed, or at least looked like it for a moment, and my shirt is now pink”
Her ribbon followed the ‘no’ of her head. “You are wrong about it being isolated. True, there is the ‘real’ reality, but most beings only vaguely perceive it at any time. You have a higher awareness so it pierces into other’s realities, and you actually see a majority of the truth of this plane. But to him? Do you think he knew at all what color shirt you had on? I could change it five more times of him talking to you and he would never remember.”
“So because I pay attention to a guy’s shirt color, that somehow makes a difference?”
Her face matched her confident question, “Well, that is what the truth was, or is, right?”
“Yeah, and the truth is that wall was annihilated, lots of people could have noticed that.”
She shook her head again; I idly wondered if I could make her neck sore with how much she was doing that. “He did not notice, and you are going to forget this wall soon compared to everything else that is going to happen. This had zero effect on the current thread. No one else’s consciousness saw it, and you will forget with what occurs soon.”
“I find it hard to believe that reality is a billion little worlds of consciousness or whatever.”
“I did not say that at all. I said someone like you is more aware of other’s worlds, and aware of the true reality. Could you in your current form know the truth everywhere? Not a chance. But as far as Solarians go, you are notable.”
“So what is the truth? I can’t believe that the physical plane doesn’t exist, so don’t try to say that.”
She laughed. “Ha, no, it is indeed quite real. It is the base from which all others stem. But to you, there are these dimensions, and there is like two more you can perceive…” she stopped a moment, tapping her lip like she was trying to remember her briefing on me, “gravity and time I believe you call them?”
“Yeah?”
“But you as a race are unaware of the lattice in which strong emotions can become engrained in. Some of your race are capable of feeling that, for example. Or of hyper dimensional beings that feed on un-concentrated consciousness. Or even of Solarians that have higher dimensional realities within themselves that in this form they are unaware of.”
“Or it appears we are unaware of whatever it is you are,” I said, pointing to her.
Her smile indicted I was right. “It is true. Makes you wonder how often we come to you if this is all you see of us, doesn’t it?”
“So what are you, a hyper dimensional being or whatever you said? Feeding on my consciousness?” I lifted my hand, smirking at her. “So does it taste good or what? This temple is pure, baby,” I said boisterously while gripping my fist.
“No, I am an incarnation of something your race is just now starting to become aware of. If I had to state it simply, perhaps I am an incarnation of the essence of the universe.” She stopped. “I suppose you could call me a LineGod.”
“A linegod?” I asked, my eyebrow raising. I believed about half of what she was saying, and that was only because I had these powerful dreams.
She nodded assent. “Mm-hmm! From our perspective, ‘god’ is fitting given your understanding. Not some sort of creator sense exactly, but awareness perhaps. And the Line because that is what we are all part of. I suppose you could call me a demigod of sorts, but a really cute and friendly one!”
I grabbed the drink I never actually wanted. I took a big sip and noted it tasted cold; I concentrated on the feeling to ensure I was still awake or alive. “If even half of this is true, this is pretty bad that you are talking to me then.”
“Quite so.” Her hand went up to her hair and began twirling the long ribbon with her fingers. The girlish behavior was oddly endearing given the heavy conversation. “There has been a reality fracture so strong - perhaps you might understand given your background - created by a particle that might be capable of creating a new universe, but definitely destroying this one in the process. It seems like it was a particle like this that indeed created Us,” she seemed to put emphasis on ‘Us’, “but a new one cannot be allowed to exist. It destroys the very essences of reality, of which I told you the physical plane is a few planes, annihilating everything in a rapidly spreading wave. This wave is initially only on the base plane, that’s yours, but intertwines all the others in its destruction. This is so devastating that time fractures backwards to ensure it never happens.”
“Ok, I have no idea what you just said.” I massaged my eyes a moment. “I really need to take a walk. Want to go outside?”
She twirled her ribbon one more time, lowering her hand to the table. “Sure.” We stood up, and walked out. I left a handful of drinks I had paid for but at this point didn’t care. As we were walking out she continued, “A particle that ri
ps apart reality is created very soon here, and it is so damaging, time fractures backwards to prevent it from occurring.”
“And according to you, I am stuck in this fracture. Or I mean we all are.”
“Yes, but I am here to help you.”
I didn’t say anything for a while. I had a lot of thoughts going through my head. My pink shirt told me there was a good chance I was still crazy. If this was a trap, she was very committed to it, at the very least she had a pretty crazy story she kept straight.
She claimed no one could see her because if affected something. Yet here she was in front of me. I definitely had felt her so on some level she was corporeal. There was someone walking the other way when I had an idea.
Without any warning I dashed at her, going to shoulder ram her into the guy. Without even looking at me she took an effortless step back. Her move left me way off balance and I almost hit the guy myself.
I rapidly turned to her, with perhaps a glare in my eyes. She had a sly look on before she laughed. “Nice try. If you believed what I was saying, you wouldn’t have bothered trying. I already told you, I can read your upper level thoughts, plus I can see the Chrono lines. You had two things against you that were impossible to surmount.”
I didn’t respond, feeling a twinge of embarrassment that she outplayed me.
The fact we were able to walk outside at all was a bit reassuring as I thought Proud might be a hologram confined to that bar. She was quite capable of walking. There were two options left: she was a thought implant, or everyone was in on some experiment I was the victim of. Eventually we ended up over by the fence overlooking ReCorp.
It was only after I walked here that I thought about the subconscious draw that brought me back here. Maybe I was distracted by walking with Proud. In fact it was almost like having a child with me with how excited and energetic she was at everything.
Proud Infinity (VayneLine) Page 5