ROSE: Customarily, we speak in favorable terms
about “getting to know each other” as people.
ROSE: Humans, I mean. I doubt trolls are as fixated
on this concept as one that is widely understood to have
preconceived merit.
ROSE: The more we learn about each other, the more
the barriers between us fall and the closer we become.
ROSE: And since birth, this idea is stationed in
the part of each human mind that is perfectly immune to the dangers
of challenge or scrutiny.
ROSE: To grow closer, to know each other, is what
it means to embrace our mutual humanity. What it means to be
vulnerable. What it means to realize an intimacy implied as a form
of divine birthright. And to question this in any way is to succumb
to dysfunction, to pathological insularity, to sociological
sin.
ROSE: It is to renounce humanity itself, is it
not?
DIRK: Yo, hold on a sec. This shit is dynamite, I
promise.
DIRK: Gotta take care of something...
Rose’s phone is ringing, and I know I’m
in for an encore of my last dead-end conversation with Kanaya, so I
block her number. I’d like to be able to attend to Rose in peace.
It’s only cordial for me to give the greater percentage of my
attention to someone I actually invited over. The nagging wife can
hold her horses.
Rose isn’t speaking to me directly. She’s been
relocated to somewhere in the workshop a little more comfortable
than the fucking floor. There’s a serviceable couch along the far
wall, placed there for visitors but never once used for that
purpose until now. I cleared off the spare parts and circuit boards
that were piled up there, and laid her down in the reclined
position she’s in now.
Her head is in her hands again, hair falling over
her shoulders. Her face is entirely hidden from me. Her shadow has
faded to light behind her, assuming the shape of a Rose-like
apparition. I nod to her, and she continues. When she speaks, it’s
almost as if it’s the apparition that’s doing the talking.
ROSE: But is it really a good idea?
ROSE: To know a person?
ROSE: Know them inside and out, so thoroughly that
no secrets remain?
ROSE: If two people were to know each other in such
a complete way, what remains of their individuality?
DIRK: If you’re going there, we might as well start
at the bottom and define what an “individual” even is.
ROSE: Oh dear god.
I place my hand on my chin and broadcast
the appearance of being deeply pensive about philosophy all of a
sudden. She gulps hard, broadcasting her grim realization that I
have indeed become serious as shit about this. Literally any kind
of intellectual pablum could pour out of my mouth any second, and
she’s not prepared. For all she knows, I’m about to start quoting
Kierkegaard.
ROSE: Please don’t start quoting Kierkegaard.
DIRK: You’ve never even read Kierkegaard, have
you.
ROSE: Like you have?
DIRK: Hey, where I come from, Wikipedia is a
venerated literary resource. So if I told you I boned the hell up
on his pages, you gotta believe me. That’s not meant as like, a
punchline or anything.
DIRK: I’m a really, really well-read dude.
ROSE: But there were only two human beings alive
where you came from.
ROSE: Who exactly were the academic cognoscenti of
your era to determine which sources were deemed respectable?
DIRK: That would be me, obviously.
ROSE: Ok.
DIRK: I suppose you’re going to tell me you haven’t
read enough Wikipedia articles on loads of scholarly shit to fancy
yourself an elite academic by 25th century standards as well?
ROSE: No, I guess I have.
ROSE: I’d be one of the top intellectuals by that
measure.
ROSE: A measure set by, I guess, literally one
solitary self-absorbed teen boy for the express purpose of making
himself feel clever.
DIRK: Absolutely correct.
ROSE: Pretty astounding, when you think about it.
That...
DIRK: What?
ROSE: That apparently in any given era the standard
for depth of intellectual mastery is inversely proportional to the
depth of the ocean.
ROSE: Really makes you think.
DIRK: Does it?
ROSE: No.
DIRK: It’s one hell of an observation,
regardless.
DIRK: Considering we’ve firmly established the fact
that we’ve both read the entire Wikipedia page on self-determinism,
like, possibly more than once, even.
DIRK: Let’s have a totally amateur debate on
philosophy. Hit me with the classics.
ROSE: Um.
DIRK: I’ll go first.
DIRK: “God is dead.”
ROSE: That’s a good one.
ROSE: Careful where you say that. You could really
ruffle some feathers out there.
DIRK: I’m not a fucking idiot. I keep my potent
rhetorical weapons of pure logic safely holstered at all times.
DIRK: You go.
ROSE: “I think therefore I am.”
DIRK: Solid.
DIRK: Check it out though.
DIRK: “The Hegelian dialectic on history.”
ROSE: Holy shit.
ROSE: Not sure I can keep up with this.
ROSE: How about,
ROSE: “Subjectivity is truth.”
DIRK: Wrong, but valid.
DIRK: Try this on for fucking size.
DIRK: “Late 19th century existential phenomenology
pre-supposes that free will is a thing.”
ROSE: I don’t think I bookmarked that page.
ROSE: Can’t back you up there.
DIRK: But what if there’s no free will.
ROSE: You didn’t put that in quotes.
ROSE: Is this a hackneyed reference, or are you
just actually riffing now?
DIRK: I’m riffing.
ROSE: I see.
ROSE: Asking the hard questions.
ROSE: It’s about time someone had the balls to.
DIRK: Yeah, I’ve always been underappreciated for
my brutal intellectual honesty. Even when I was living alone in the
middle of the ocean, if you can believe it.
ROSE: I think free will is a thing, sure.
DIRK: Are you sure about that?
ROSE: ...
DIRK: Haven’t we spent the entire day having a
feelings jam on how none of us got here by accident?
DIRK: Our lives were meticulously planned from
clone-ception up through this very post-canon moment we find
ourselves riffing in about the very free will we probably don’t
even have.
DIRK: Don’t you think it’s all a little too
convenient?
ROSE: This seriously is just a conversation between
two stoned people now.
ROSE: The bad kind, where neither one even gets to
be high.
DIRK: Seriously, Rose. Do you think that you have
free will?
ROSE: I...
DIRK: Stand up.
She tries to stand up, but I haven’t
narratively allowed it yet. Her hands don’t even move. She tenses,
then relaxes into the couch again, giving up on the attempt. She
attributes it to exhaustion, an all-encompassing sense of weakness
due to her condition. Of course, she has been weakened by
her condition, and thus she suspects nothing.
DIRK: Never mind.
DIRK: You shouldn’t be moving around much in your
condition, remember?
DIRK: I’ll sit.
I sit beside her, and cross my legs
casually. It’s all done in one fluid motion in a way that serves as
a seamless transition between the points I’m making, like a
magician asking the volunteer to hold his handkerchief as he
continues his verbal misdirection uninterrupted. It’s done deftly
enough that she doesn’t notice how close I end up sitting to her.
To be honest, I don’t even notice myself until I’ve done it. I
continue speaking, and she remains rapt. But now even I can’t help
but wonder where I’m going with this.
DIRK: Logically speaking, individuality is a
collection of processes and properties, interrelations of matter
and experience all bundled together.
DIRK: Your experience and processes don’t want to
be bundled together anymore.
A moment goes by, and she’s quiet,
perhaps puzzling over what I said. Then I remember I haven’t
narratively permitted a response. I’m forgetting myself, like a
fool. Distracted by the surprise my own actions have caused me. I
resolve to stay focused, remain in control. I let her speak.
ROSE: I don’t understand.
DIRK: You do, though.
DIRK: We’ve been talking about it, but using
different concepts.
DIRK: Your Ultimate Self, that which is revealed
when the mind’s partitions are stripped away, and all potentiality
of who you are and what you could have been flow together.
DIRK: Those are the experiences and processes that
are refusing to stay bundled, that’s what your body can’t endure.
The unbundling itself is your mind coming apart.
DIRK: Because you’re not as strong as me. Not
yet.
DIRK: But you can be.
DIRK: I’m working on that.
DIRK: But for now, I’m focused on stabilizing you
with my own expanding consciousness.
DIRK: It’s enveloping you now, in a way you can’t
see. Keeping your thoughts solid, your identity anchored to your
physical form as it strains to hold itself together.
DIRK: You can’t see it, what I’m talking about. But
I can help you.
DIRK: I can help you see what I see, if only for a
little while.
DIRK: All you have to do is open your eyes.
DIRK: Maybe what you see will help you through
this.
DIRK: Is that what you’d like?
DIRK: ...Rose?
Her eyes are shut, her look of
concentration speaking to the migraine she must be fighting now.
Small beads of sweat appear on her forehead. She won’t respond. And
not because I haven’t allowed it.
DIRK: Rose, stop being a fucking martyr and open
your eyes.
Rose opens her eyes. Not her physical
eyes. She opens the others easily, internally, beholding a field of
perception elsewhere entirely. They see what I want her to see.
That which quietly desires to be seen. She loses track of my voice,
which begins to mingle with these words.
I offer her my hand. My physical hand. Without
opening her physical eyes, she lifts her hand from her lap and
places it in mine. I put my other hand on top of hers, and wait as
she drifts beyond the torments of her unbundling mind. My words
feel like her own intimate thoughts and my distant voice in the
room at the same time.
DIRK: Open your eyes wider.
DIRK: What do you see?
We’re not in my workshop anymore.
Physically, yes, we’re still here. But on a higher textual plane,
we’ve pulled back from that, from Earth C itself. Rose takes a
shuddering breath and runs an invisible pair of hands afforded by
her new sight over the narrative whole cloth, and begins smoothing
out the wrinkles.
ROSE: I see... John.
DIRK: Doing exactly what you told him to do, like a
good boy.
ROSE: ...
DIRK: What’s there to be upset about? You knew this
was how it was supposed to go down.
ROSE: He could have made another choice.
DIRK: Then where would we be?
ROSE: Who knows.
DIRK: No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question.
DIRK: If John could have made another choice, then
you can see what it is.
DIRK: If it can happen, then it’s been written. And
if it’s been written, you can read it right now.
ROSE: I... don’t know if I want to see.
DIRK: If there’s no free will, then there’s no
regret either.
DIRK: Look harder.
She looks harder.
I’m not going to describe what she sees. First of
all, that would be spoiling it. Unless you already know, in which
case, I guess what’s taking place here qualifies as something
closer to dramatic irony. But if you really want to see it for
yourself, stop what you’re doing, flip the whole thing over, and
begin again. I’ll be right here when you get back, waiting. Trust
me, no one’s going anywhere.
DIRK: So, what do you think?
ROSE: It’s difficult to say.
ROSE: I suppose there are negatives and positives.
I can’t say if that option would be any better or worse than what
we’re experiencing now.
ROSE: Whichever way our fate unravels there’s too
much of... something.
ROSE: Too much blood, too much sugar.
ROSE: I almost can’t see through it.
ROSE: It’s as if our extra-canon reality, our
surroundings, our actions and their consequences...
ROSE: They’ve all lost the ability to blend the
ingredients responsibly.
ROSE: Do you know what I mean?
DIRK: Yes.
ROSE: As if the moment we entered the victory
state, everything began to slowly congeal.
ROSE: And when John made his decision, it
accelerated the process. The congealing intensified, causing a sort
of grotesque conceptual clumping.
ROSE: Concentrating the constituent properties of
consumption into unbearable doses.
ROSE: Like when you get to the bottom of a sweet
drink, and all that’s left is syrup.
It’s growing dark around her again. The
apparition she’s been projecting behind her fades, and she starts
to bleed light and shadow in all directions. Her physical eyes are
open now, and shining bright. It’s a striking sight. She’s
beautiful, actually—diaphanous and disheveled and filled with the
limitless light of metaspiritual curiosity.
But for all the effervescent mysticism of her
otherworldly becoming, I feel like this is the very first time I’m
truly seeing her for what she’s always been to me. She’s my
daughter in every sense of the word. My equal, my mirror.
It used to be odd to consider it. A technical fact
I’d accepted as a genetic reality, but nothing that could ever
quite penetrate down to the soul. But in this moment it doesn’t
feel strange at all. It feels right, suddenly. And I know she must
feel the same way. There’s no way she doesn’t. All she needs is a
nudge in the right direction.
We’re family. We belong together. And after years
of micromanaging the inconsistent and confused desires of total
imbeciles, wouldn’t it be a relief to have someone by my side who
understood me?
DIRK: You’re almost there.
DIRK: All your eyes are open, Rose.
DIRK: Now all you need to do is take a step off the
precipice.
DIRK: It’ll be a long fall. But I’ll catch you.
ROSE: But what if the person you catch...
ROSE: Isn’t me anymore?
DIRK: Who gives a fuck. She’ll be better.
And there, right there, is the moment she
lets go. She uncouples herself from the creaking, buckling
partitions of her physical mind, and her consciousness dissolves
into a space more vast, a domain given structure and order by my
words and conviction. She’s permitted the barriers between us to
fall, to allow us to know each other more perfectly. As she was
saying before, to resist this, to question it in any way, would be
to succumb to dysfunction, to pathological insularity, to
sociological sin. Would it not be to renounce humanity
itself?
And yet, ironically, renouncing our humanity is
exactly what we have arguably just done. Good riddance, I say.
Her body should be dead now. But I’m holding it
together until I can implement the more permanent solution I have
in mind. All in due time. For now, what is there to do but savor
this moment? To appreciate her final waking minutes as a being of
flesh and blood? She turns, and the light from her eyes is
blinding. It dims a bit as she lowers her eyelids. She regards me
with an almost unbearably bright adoration. The kind that’s
difficult to look at directly, but you can’t manage to look away
either. It’s like the first time you see the Green Sun. Of course
it is, because that’s the way I’m describing it. The truth belongs
to me. And as of now, so does she.
ROSE: I see it now.
ROSE: You’re right.
DIRK: Have I ever not been?
ROSE: You...
A wrinkle in her brow. It smoothes out
quickly. She murmurs to herself, trailing off quietly.
ROSE: What... time is it...?
I step forward and steady her, hand firm
but gentle against her cheek. That’s all she needs: a stable
anchor.
DIRK: Rose, does time even exist?
You already know the answer.