404 lines
22 KiB
HTML
404 lines
22 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
|
||
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
|
||
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
|
||
|
||
<html xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
|
||
<head profile='http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/'>
|
||
<meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html;'/>
|
||
<title>The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat - Chapter 25</title>
|
||
<meta name='DCTERMS.title' content='The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat'/>
|
||
<meta name='DCTERMS.language' content='en' scheme='DCTERMS.RFC4646'/>
|
||
<meta name='DCTERMS.source' content='MFW'/>
|
||
<meta name='DCTERMS.issued' content='{$issued}' scheme='DCTERMS.W3CDTF'/>
|
||
<meta name='DCTERMS.creator' content='EpubPress'/>
|
||
<meta name='DCTERMS.contributor' content=''/>
|
||
<meta name='DCTERMS.modified' content='{$issued}' scheme='DCTERMS.W3CDTF'/>
|
||
<meta name='DCTERMS.provenance' content=''/>
|
||
<meta name='DCTERMS.subject' content='Unknown'/>
|
||
<link rel='schema.DC' href='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/' hreflang='en'/>
|
||
<link rel='schema.DCTERMS' href='http://purl.org/dc/terms/' hreflang='en'/>
|
||
<link rel='schema.DCTYPE' href='http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/' hreflang='en'/>
|
||
<link rel='schema.DCAM' href='http://purl.org/dc/dcam/' hreflang='en'/>
|
||
<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='../Styles/ebook.css'/>
|
||
</head>
|
||
<body>
|
||
<div id='s25'></div>
|
||
<div>
|
||
<h1>Chapter 25</h1>
|
||
<div class="o-story_text o_epilogue type-rg type-sm line-caption line-copy pad-x-0 pad-x-lg pad-b-lg">
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Customarily, we speak in favorable terms
|
||
about “getting to know each other” as people.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Humans, I mean. I doubt trolls are as fixated
|
||
on this concept as one that is widely understood to have
|
||
preconceived merit.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: The more we learn about each other, the more
|
||
the barriers between us fall and the closer we become.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: It is to renounce humanity itself, is it
|
||
not?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Yo, hold on a sec. This shit is dynamite, I
|
||
promise.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Gotta take care of something...</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: But is it really a good idea?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: To know a person?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Know them inside and out, so thoroughly that
|
||
no secrets remain?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: If two people were to know each other in such
|
||
a complete way, what remains of their individuality?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: If you’re going there, we might as well start
|
||
at the bottom and define what an “individual” even is.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Oh dear god.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Please don’t start quoting Kierkegaard.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: You’ve never even read Kierkegaard, have
|
||
you.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Like you have?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: I’m a really, really well-read dude.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: But there were only two human beings alive
|
||
where you came from.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Who exactly were the academic cognoscenti of
|
||
your era to determine which sources were deemed respectable?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: That would be me, obviously.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Ok.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: No, I guess I have.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I’d be one of the top intellectuals by that
|
||
measure.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: A measure set by, I guess, literally one
|
||
solitary self-absorbed teen boy for the express purpose of making
|
||
himself feel clever.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Absolutely correct.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Pretty astounding, when you think about it.
|
||
That...</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: What?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: That apparently in any given era the standard
|
||
for depth of intellectual mastery is inversely proportional to the
|
||
depth of the ocean.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Really makes you think.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Does it?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: No.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: It’s one hell of an observation,
|
||
regardless.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Considering we’ve firmly established the fact
|
||
that we’ve both read the entire Wikipedia page on self-determinism,
|
||
like, <em>possibly</em> more than once, even.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Let’s have a totally amateur debate on
|
||
philosophy. Hit me with the classics.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Um.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: I’ll go first.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: “God is dead.”</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: That’s a good one.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Careful where you say that. You could really
|
||
ruffle some feathers out there.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: I’m not a fucking idiot. I keep my potent
|
||
rhetorical weapons of pure logic safely holstered at all times.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: You go.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: “I think therefore I am.”</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Solid.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Check it out though.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: “The Hegelian dialectic on history.”</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Holy shit.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Not sure I can keep up with this.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: How about,</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: “Subjectivity is truth.”</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Wrong, but valid.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Try this on for fucking size.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: “Late 19th century existential phenomenology
|
||
pre-supposes that free will is a thing.”</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I don’t think I bookmarked that page.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Can’t back you up there.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: But what if there’s no free will.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: You didn’t put that in quotes.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Is this a hackneyed reference, or are you
|
||
just actually riffing now?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: I’m riffing.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I see.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Asking the hard questions.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: It’s about time someone had the balls to.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I think free will is a thing, sure.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Are you sure about that?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: ...</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Haven’t we spent the entire day having a
|
||
feelings jam on how none of us got here by accident?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Don’t you think it’s all a little too
|
||
convenient?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: This seriously is just a conversation between
|
||
two stoned people now.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: The bad kind, where neither one even gets to
|
||
be high.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Seriously, Rose. Do you think that you have
|
||
free will?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I...</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Stand up.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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 <em>has</em> been weakened by
|
||
her condition, and thus she suspects nothing.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Never mind.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: You shouldn’t be moving around much in your
|
||
condition, remember?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: I’ll sit.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Logically speaking, individuality is a
|
||
collection of processes and properties, interrelations of matter
|
||
and experience all bundled together.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Your experience and processes don’t want to
|
||
be bundled together anymore.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I don’t understand.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: You do, though.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: We’ve been talking about it, but using
|
||
different concepts.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Because you’re not as strong as me. Not
|
||
yet.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: But you can be.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: I’m working on that.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: But for now, I’m focused on stabilizing you
|
||
with my own expanding consciousness.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: You can’t see it, what I’m talking about. But
|
||
I can help you.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: I can help you see what I see, if only for a
|
||
little while.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: All you have to do is open your eyes.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Maybe what you see will help you through
|
||
this.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Is that what you’d like?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: ...Rose?</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Rose, stop being a fucking martyr and open
|
||
your eyes.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Open your eyes wider.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: What do you see?</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I see... John.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Doing exactly what you told him to do, like a
|
||
good boy.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: ...</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: What’s there to be upset about? You knew this
|
||
was how it was supposed to go down.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: He could have made another choice.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Then where would we be?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Who knows.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: If John could have made another choice, then
|
||
you can see what it is.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: If it can happen, then it’s been written. And
|
||
if it’s been written, you can read it right now.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I... don’t know if I want to see.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: If there’s no free will, then there’s no
|
||
regret either.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Look harder.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">She looks harder.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: So, what do you think?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: It’s difficult to say.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Whichever way our fate unravels there’s too
|
||
much of... something.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Too much blood, too much sugar.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I almost can’t see through it.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: It’s as if our extra-canon reality, our
|
||
surroundings, our actions and their consequences...</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: They’ve all lost the ability to blend the
|
||
ingredients responsibly.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Do you know what I mean?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Yes.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: As if the moment we entered the victory
|
||
state, everything began to slowly congeal.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: And when John made his decision, it
|
||
accelerated the process. The congealing intensified, causing a sort
|
||
of grotesque conceptual clumping.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Concentrating the constituent properties of
|
||
consumption into unbearable doses.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Like when you get to the bottom of a sweet
|
||
drink, and all that’s left is syrup.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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?</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: You’re almost there.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: All your eyes are open, Rose.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Now all you need to do is take a step off the
|
||
precipice.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: It’ll be a long fall. But I’ll catch you.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: But what if the person you catch...</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: Isn’t me anymore?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Who gives a fuck. She’ll be better.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">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 <em>sin</em>. Would it not be to renounce humanity
|
||
itself?</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">And yet, ironically, renouncing our humanity is
|
||
exactly what we have arguably just done. Good riddance, I say.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">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.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: I see it now.</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: You’re right.</p>
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Have I ever not been?</p>
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: You...</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">A wrinkle in her brow. It smoothes out
|
||
quickly. She murmurs to herself, trailing off quietly.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="rose">ROSE: What... time is it...?</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">I step forward and steady her, hand firm
|
||
but gentle against her cheek. That’s all she needs: a stable
|
||
anchor.</p>
|
||
<div class="chat type-rg type-hs-small">
|
||
<p class="dirk">DIRK: Rose, does time even exist?</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p class="no-indent dirk">You already know the answer.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html> |