“…What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“Removed, man, what could be simpler? They’re not fucking there. Never archived seemingly, if you don’t count the WHOIS records.”
He felt the cracked tiles sink away from under his feet. His head felt empty and loud. He stumbled to the nearest wall, slumped down against it. The quiet chat of pigeons a floor above them was warping into a warbled, neverending giggle.
“Okay, fuck the plainsite, is his Tidepools account account still there? There’s no way he deleted it, it was, like, our whole life?”
“Yeah, uh, about that…” - pushing through her own awkward hesitation with something vaguely akin to a sigh, Moss turned her puppet to face away and flashed on the projector. A barren desert of a datasheet laid over flakes of once-wallpaper blooming with mold and lichen, - “There’s some WEIRD shit going on in Tidepools, brother. At first I thought the databroker we paid was a hack, but no, the company’s just fucking cursed,” - five views of different tables filtered by the same query, side by side.
Account created on April 12, 2032. Account created Dec 29, 2049. Account created on Aug 11, -2. Account created Mar 20, 2008. Account created Feb 29, 2955.
“And it’s all like that,” - Leo sighed, burrowing fingers into his hair.
“Yep,” - the demon stalled for a second, staring blankly at her own projection, - “All fields scrambled harder than Neph’s attempt at an omelette. Sorry to disappoint, seems we’re not getting your elusive boyfriend this easy.”
He closed his eyes, pushing down swelling dread. Pigeons mumbled in irregular waves, praising this fall’s last share of warmth. Young, crooked bushes on the factory roofs waved their own goodbyes, preparing for a long dream.
“How long has this been a thing?”
“I’m not sure, but about a year and a half ago the rot was already public knowledge. Seaside databrokers have definitely discarded all the healthy exports by now, and the ones on Earth are all in, like, Britain. We’re never scrounging enough money for those.”
He took a deep breath and let it out in a wheezing unhappy chuckle.
“Never thought I’d be pissed off about Ouroboros doing its job, but here we are.”
“Yeah, real annoying sometimes,” - the puppet’s voice remained serious as the owner switched the projector off and turned to face him.
“What’s the next search vector?”
“Probably social. Find your friends, then friends of friends.”
“I think I still have the address book on the old laptop, unless the disk rusted away or something. Most of them were through Tidepools, though, and I am not getting back into my old account with the new chip.”
Moss tilted its head, squinting down from her perch.
“Ain’t no way you guys had no contingency for spilling coffee over your computers. No alt account? No permanent lobby invites?”
An old ad reel popped up in his mind, almost comical in hindsight. He swatted the thought away with a weak laugh.
“Have you even read their frontpage? Tidepools doesn’t have lobby invites, it’s not fucking VRChat…”
“Really? I thought it was VRChat but hundred times as pretentious.”
“Well, kinda is. My point, though: they don’t have any kind of guids, not user-facing at least. You can’t get a hardlink to your place, it’s always connected through some other place which is connected to another. It’s a web of roads. And the stops are little worlds that rot when unattended. Roads always shift, too, every connection is negotiated. Makes it super fun to learn your neighborhood and explore, so to speak…” - he realized he had trailed off, spit the bitter yearning to his side, down into the tangle of branches, - “Same thing with social mechanics, really. Friend codes aren’t a thing.”
“Oka-a-ay, okay, I’ll watch a review or some shit, Coral’s word… And, what, you just didn’t see that as a problem? Didn’t even leave each other emails?”
“I mean, sometimes we did. I can recall a few. But it was against general etiquette to be pushy about it. Mostly reserved for long-time neighbors and friends.”
Crunching of rubble from across the floor informed them of Sel’s inevitable return. Some pigeons quieted down, spooked by the noise.
“I have some more ideas lying around. Get you a new proxy suit, then we can multithread the efforts. Tidepools hasn’t gone under and is still getting some revenue, maybe you’ll figure out how to get your contacts again. Doubt he learned to hide very well in just a few…”
“…Fucking hell Moss,” - the footsteps emerged from the mold-coated corridor, followed by a witch slightly flustered from the effort. They dropped the toolbox onto the rotting parquet and hunched down amidst the doorframe, - “I told you to wait until we come back. Now I feel anxious and discouraged and we still have the front lot to vandalize.”
Leo laughed, reaching into his bag for a water bottle.
“Don’t listen to them, I prefer it this way,” - he smiled, handing it over, - “At least now I know what to expect for the next week. Did he give you the spare batteries?”
“If these aren’t spare batteries rattling in there then bastard must’ve stuffed this box full of rocks,” - Sel downed at least 200 mL in a big noisy gulp. He watched a trickle of water escape from the corner of their mouth, and found himself smiling.
“You could’ve left the box at the ground floor.”
“Nah, the kids in this hood are chaos incarnate. Not that I particularly need the gift drill… But I’d like to finish today’s project before letting them nab it, y’know?”
“What the hell would they even do with a power drill?”
“Idunno, fence it for a fag and a half? You can come down and ask, they’re hanging out in the warehouse.”
“Sib, you are the hardware fence,” - Moss bleeped in amplified exasperation.
The empty bottle froze in the witch’s fingers.
“Holy shit you’re right.”
The three’s laughter was a final straw for the birds. They took off in a burst, circling westward in collective annoyment.
“Anesthetic allergies?” - the nurse asked from under their bug-like mask, half-cut feathers of their Gull’s Mercy talisman teetering a bit more than he would expect from the polite draft.
“None.”
“Great,” - an acoustically exaggerated punctuation mark as their pen hit the pristine clipboard for the final time, - “Follow.”
Every step from then bring him further from sunlight, deeper into Third Arm’s sterile grey catacombs. Catching the last glimpse of Sel’s awkwardly compressed posture in a reflection on a door, he wondered about the buildings that became Arms. Tried to imagine what the halls looked like before Rivermother appropriated them, what kind of people worked here. Government employees? Military? Corporate dogs?
None of the options quite fit, and he did not want to piss off the nurse by stalling.
It didn’t matter. He had earned his new eye. He was going to get it. Everything else could go to hell.
“I’ve been having the same dream.”
Leo squinted at him over the flawed mirror of the pond, four hands not stopping their threading on the entity mold. Purple snakes of aurorae above them twisted in their unending fight, full regularity so scaled out even their trained eyes did not see it. Yet. A few months later they’d have to shuffle component frequencies around, or wedge another trick into the shader.
“Which dream?” - an idle, neutral curiosity in the voice of his partner, more focused on the blueprint than his words.
“The concave crabs.”
“The crabs?.. Is it the one where you work on a cruise ship and…”
“No, that one had shrimp, dummy. I think I didn’t tell you before. This one is…” - his fists clenched against his will, deforming the polygons below, misplaced glass blades hanging awkwardly in the gap before a rebuild caught up to them, - “It goes like this. I’m walking down the coast, catching up with falling tide. Don’t know where, definitely not anywhere around Brest. The crabs scratch concave heptagons into the pebbles, and smokes rises from writhing seaweed. The tide never stops, I keep walking down, there’s all sorts of fish all around me, all smashed against rocks and left behind. And the water ahead bends into a black whirlpool, the entire ocean slipping into a… Ravine, I guess? A crack in the seabed wider than the horizon. And it’s eating the sea.”
He stopped to catch his breath. Every time he thought he wouldn’t need to, and every time was proven wrong.
“Oh, look who’s caught me sneaking,” - Boxer poked out from the kitchen, old ugly apron strangely fitting on his narrow chest. Leo had not expected it to look right on anyone but his mother, but was recently proven wrong, - “Hope you don’t mind more intrusions.”
Shuffling from the living room informed him that the parent was awake of his presence. No greeting ensued. He didn’t try either. The sliding door remained closed.
“I do, actually. The more you do this the more I owe you,” - throwing off his coat with a sigh, not bothering to hang it. Wincing as the fabric tugged at fresh stitches.
“Your oven is a bitch, how do you deal with this horror?” - the self-inflicted guest kept the pressure on even while Leo was in the bathroom.
“Quite simple, I don’t. Haven’t used it in years,” - he scoffed and turned the water up, drowning out further attempts at smalltalk.
The cold on his forearms was refreshing, drowning out the itching for a moment. Tiles below the showerhead to his right were still yellowish, despite Boxer’s best efforts. Whatever strand of bacteria had lived there before the bleaching, it seemed to leave a permanent etch on the ceramic surface. An impressive feat, and a little concerning. As far as he knew, this only happened inside the Stacks.
Driven by habit, he focused on the mirror, forced himself to examine the flipped room, decoupling concepts until the surface was a still lake under a mile of rock, and beneath was some aquatic things’ vacant dwelling.
He mechanically catalogued cheap furnishings, dirty garments and shoddy metalwork of the supposed creatures, until he could rebuild their routine in his head.
Satisfied with the summary, he shattered the image with a splash of cold engulfing his face.
“Hey, um, have you… Are you okay?”
“Hold on, not done yet,” - he clenched his teeth, almost hitting the suit’s jack-out trigger by accident, but managed to steady his heartbeat, seal the oily trickle of dread, - “I have some sort of tool with me, it’s kind of like an ice pick, but it also folds out with a second blade and also has a big brush on it? I dunno. Anyways, the wind picks up after water, but it does not affect me. Not as much as crabs and junk, at least. I can use the pick-brush to keep myself steady on the rocks. But then, someone calls me from behind, trying to get me to come back.”
The concern on Leo’s face was a beam of warmth towards a surface that wasn’t there. He didn’t understand it. Resolved to complete the retelling regardless, June continued.
“They think they’re saving me from being sucked in. They have a gap of a face. Somehow I feel the wind has ripped it away, most of their features are gone, actually. They slip on the rocks and hurt themselves every two steps. And when they are about to grab my arm, a piece of driftwood hits them in the neck, and they tumble down into the water, and I see their limbs bend in all the wrong ways as the current drags them off.”
The soundscape around them felt frail, soggy cardboard walls of a house on the shore trembling under a mad assault.
“And then?..”
“Nothing. That’s the end.”
The ground under his claws was a jumbled mess, wild angles somehow convincing the seeder to generate bush saplings on the floating bits. He sighed as he discarded all edits from the session.
“Jesus, that’s fucked. Did you mention it to anyone else?”
“Are you kidding me? Fucking everyone,” - June chuckle-sobbed, - “And all I ever got were… Don’t know, I guess reasonable reactions.”
Hugging his knees, Leo watched with squinting yellow eyes, light tunic over his torso conforming to simulated breeze. The top pair was closed, which usually meant he was concentrating.
“And you want something unreasonable.”
“Yes, for once I fucking do,” - June moaned into the breeze.
“Is a hug unreasonable?”
He couldn’t help but laugh. Leo may not have got it still, but it felt better than the other times, somehow.
“No, but I’ll take it.”
The dough was hard and crumbly, ginger and cinnamon twisting together into a brittle duet. Having scooped up the cookies into a big bowl, Niko was now washing the tray, as well as he could in a sink that was definitely not graded for it.
“Seriously, man, I appreciate it, but it’s too much effort” - Leo was not intent on giving up, - “It’d be too much even if you did the bare minimum.”
“Eh, it’s a weekend, no hurt done,” - his recent friend switched to the metal sponge, - “And I’ll have you know, baking is fun. It’s like clay modelling but you can also eat it!”
He spun the next bird-shaped pastry in his hand for a bit before biting off a wing. Through half-closed blinds, lamp clusters on the static concrete sky sliced the floor into ribbons. A few stories below, drunk hydroponics workers were taking out steam on each other to the amusement of a few teenagers. Tinkered vines covering the opposing facade as unnaturally green as ever.
“Yeah, suppose so.”
“And better than to leave your mum without help,” - Boxer’s ever-disheveled beard was stretched into a plain, genuine grin.
“I think she could use a refresher on what that’s like,” - he winced, trying not to sound too aggressive.
Locked between four ephemeral arms of a person he had never seen, head drowning in a penguin-mimicking pillow, he found himself treading ever closer to Hypnos. Rain pattered down on rocks outside the cavern, unfinished projects folded into awkward ghostly outlines, left behind, out of sight below the creek’s bend.
The grotto was a private curiosity of theirs. They had failed to agree on how it got here: Leo always insisted that this was someone’s old construction that outlived its own edit log markers, while June felt it could not have been more natural. A rare terrain feature, hiding at the base of an unassuming cliff in a largely unused patch of woodlands. Wherever it had come from, it was theirs now.
Inexorable as always, the suit alarm broke up the quiet. A wave of itching across his spine, raising hairs, forcing an annoyed groan, one vengeful ghost of a label searing through his view.
WARNING: SLEEPING IN PROXY MODE IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH!
POTENTIAL CONSEQUENCES INCLUDE: VIVID NIGHTMARES, TACTILE HALLUCINATIONS, DISRUPTION OF CIRCADIAN RHYTHM.
REPEATED ABUSE CAUSES: CHRONIC INSOMNIA, PSYCHOTIC EPISODES, IN RARE CASES PERIPHERAL NERVE DAMAGE.
IF YOU FEEL EXHAUSTED, PLEASE JACK OUT.“Fuck off,” - he growled at the golem, shaking off the disgusting sensation.
“Aww, caught the buzzer?”
“Yeah,” - a glance at the clock cemented his acceptance, - “I gotta get going anyways.”
“Aight,” - his partner’s voice was only a little bit disappointed, - “You feel lighter?”
“Yes, thank you very much love,” - he caught Leo mid-stretch with a surprise kiss, and jacked out right in the middle of it.
Bookshelves warping into existence, late morning sun broken up by jagged wyrmbone fragments framing their yard in absence of a conventional fence. Dusty posters. Bucket of plushies. Ural Mindworks laptop running his suit, rugged black case as alienated from surfaces around it as ever.
“Honey, are you there?” - familiar voice, rattling of the doorhandle, - “I’m leaving for the markets in 20 minutes, are you coming too?”
“Sure, add five more and I will,” - he yawned, pulling off the suit. A ghost itch was left after the alarm, slowly dissipating through the tissue, - “We got any coffee?”
“Yes, I left a mug near the fridge,” - footsteps receding, - “Just don’t stall too long, best buyers come around two…”
“Thanks gran.”
Suit thrown onto the bed, looking oddly comfortable for an inanimate object. It took a few longing sighs to prevent himself from following, but he succeeded.
“The toil continues,” - he complained to the tribune of plants on the windowsill, pulling on the binder. Succulents seemed to suggest stoicism, while the spinach tray peppered out insincere exaggerated condolences. He decided that both were punishable by delay of watering.
Ten minutes short of arranged time, he clattered into the kitchen. Grandmother was out front, tightening belts on the back of the truck. He squinted at the crate she was packing. Some of the glinting tissue was shifting, trying to push the lid open. He considered whether to call out in warning, but she spotted it first, cutting escape attempts short with a screech of a taser.
He finished his cup, and scratched the cat’s ear on his way out. The coastline whispered from behind bush-crested ridges, assuring him of its own safety.
“Mate, that’s bit harsh. Do you wanna be the sorta bloke sayin’ that sorta stuff?”
Boxer’s expression was more sad than judgmental.
He didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t know if he cared to know.
So, avoiding eye contact, he shrugged, and continued eating.
The world was dull. As per Tidepools’ design goal and selling point, nothing would ever stay untouched. Everything would rot. Chroma Valley, his child and home, should have passed the point of no return.
But it was still there. Unattended, unvisited, unlinked from every peer save for one distant acquaintance, stretched way past its supposed expiration date. But, against all odds and rules, still there.
“Moss? I found it,” - he tapped the smooth translucent stone in his right hand, sending her a ping.
“(ദ്ദി ˙ᗜ˙ )”, - his suit alert system burned into the
viewport as the demon’s presence rippled outwards from the tool,
exploding into a cloud of rendering artifacts. He felt dizzy watching
her cycle through random meshes and shaders so rapidly, but, to his
luck, she was quick to adapt and coalesce.
“FUN SERVICE TO DISEMBOWEL ILL GIVE IT THAT” - the tall,
roughly outlined humanoid stretching in front of him was an even more
obvious intruder than his default avatar, a jittering, blinking mass of
small models pulled from foliage asset pool, flowing in place as she
started to glide sideways towards the nearest ruin.
“Did you have to manifest through the terrain generator?” - he sighed, watching her awkwardly clip inside only to poke back out.
“THIS IS THE TERRAIN GENERATOR? OH-” - a flurry of
capture tools blinked in and out of existence around her form, image
bubbles immediately clattering to the ground, -
“OH THAT EXPLAIN WHY THERES CUBEMARCHING HERE (≧ᗜ≦)”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“FIRST THING THAT FIT IM NOT RUNNING THE FULL RENDERER INSIDE MYSELF BRO THIS SHIT BLOATED AS BALS”
He didn’t want to argue. Suppressing a wince at the sight of the decayed crossroads square was taking enough of his willpower already.
“Can you at least speak not through the suit golem? This bastard hurts my eyes.”
“SORRY BUB THE VOIP STACK HERE IS ABT AS ICKY DEAL W/ IT”
Sighing, he picked a direction and took off. The demon followed, flying loops ahead and behind him, sniffing the decaying space like an otherworldly but excited dog, leaving a trail of warping on every surface she touched. Two trespassers under a sky that had forgotten its color.
Through the empty hub hall, where the only performer was silence, and seats had turned to dust.
Through the orchard ring, where trees were little more than dry trunks, and interlocking layers of strangling vines concealed the ground from view.
Through the lakeside stilt-huts, where crumbling piers failed to segment still water, and bloated fish were naval mines of memory.
“(ó﹏ò｡) HEY DONT CRUMBLE YET WE GOT OTHER THINGS TO TRY”
“I know.”
The sand under his unfamiliar skin was fine and warm, yet still felt like nothing. Confused tall grasses consuming the brittle forest’s dry floor stood alert, waiting for touch of a wind that wouldn’t come. The brook’s surface was a perfect, motionless flat plane.
They had tried everywhere.
“I UM. I DONT. WHY ARE YOU CRYING? SORRY”
“Home’s disappearing, and forest forgets.”
It was weird, watching the demon’s projection shift and fiddle in place. She almost seemed human, blending with rocks a few meters in front of him. He could almost imagine eyes darting nervously from beneath the chaos of her scruffy impromptu shell. She seemed lost too, just in a different way.
“They were meant to be auto-deleted within like, a year of complete abandonment, you know,” - he exhaled through the tears, grief flowing from his mouth in wafts of acrid smoke, - “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I remember… Fuck, I remember setting up the fucking… Decay handlers for the pool. The ones that’re still scrambling the earth. All this creepy jank’s like… I knew the bugs were there. I thought I’d never see them. But here I am, I guess. Fuck.”
“OH SHIT I DIDNT KNOW EVEN THE ROT WAS USERDEFINED”
“Pretty restrictive… But, yeah, it was,” - at the memory of mastering the clunky system, he couldn’t help but feel bitter, - “Judging by how much it’s fucking me up, I guess I’m a pretty good designer.”
“YEAH I WAS MEANING TO SAY I KINDA LIKE THE LITTLE THINGAMABOBS CRAWLING THROUGH THE SCENE TREE I THINK THEY'RE CUTE. KINDA FEEL LIKE AXOLOTLS”
The comparison was so baffling yet in character it immediately flipped him into a laughing fit.
“DID I SAY SOMETHING WRONG?”
“No, don’t worry, you are actually kinda on point,” - he sat up in a jolt, wiping his face, - “They are kind of like axolotls. Blind, stupid, and also regenerate really well.”
The demon’s form slumped down a little, visibly relaxed.
“You gave me an idea with the axolotls. I think we’ve got another place to visit,” - he waved vaguely, taking off up the stream, towards overgrown low cliffs.
The five-minute hike did not seem to stretch. To no surprise, he had run out of sadness.
The little grotto was intact. Standing in the scattered light of the stuck sun, he scanned the interior. As he had expected, all “soft” props were long gone, and they never stuck around long enough to add actual furniture.
He sat down on his familiar spot, a flat rock on the edge of the now exhausted stream. He was not surprised.
“Guess I was wrong.”
“HUH?”
“I always thought this place was a manual deformation. I was wrong. The crawlers didn’t touch it much. It’s natural.”
“WEIRDEST IVE SEEN SO FAR”
“Huh?”
“DUNNO IT TASTES STRANGE AROUND HERE”
He began turning to face her, and a glint from under the stream-plane caught his eye. He reached in, feeling no resistance, and snatched a dark, shaved pebble from a pile of pebbles just like it. Except it felt different.
“THAT. WHATEVER THAT IS,” - Moss morphed towards him in
a hurry, stretching a lichen-covered arm towards the item. A bubble of
Moss-absence formed in response, the object repulsing attempts at
editing the surroundings, -
“JACKPOT. THIS THING'S WORLD-PINNED. THIS WAS LEFT ON PURPOSE.”
“Is it anything useful though?”
“HOLD ON, IT DOESNT LIKE ME FOR SOME REASON” - the
demon’s projection receded, freezing in place an arm away from him in a
standing pose. Almost correct, except for the five-centimeter gap
between her feet and the ground below, -
“TRY STICKING IT INTO MY CHEST”
“Alright?..”
Overcoming a primal hesitation, he plunged the rock into his friend’s torso. She stayed entirely motionless as slow waves rippled across her form.
“YESSSSS GOT IT”
“What’s in there?”
“A NAME”
“A name as in?..”
“YES, SUMMON HANDLE. JACK OUT NOW”
Not waiting for a repeat, he bit down as hard as he could, falling back into reality in a dizzying blur, pulling up the headset.
“Sel, SEL, we need a blank heart!” - the demon rushed its owner. Leo found her usual voice unusually pleasant comparing to red-on-black suit alarm labels.
“Uh…” - standing up from the desk, the witch reached out into a flooded wall counter, - “Yeah, sure, we have some. What for though?”
“No idea, plug it in.”
Sel jabbed in the cable, and the little regular heptagonal prism whirred to life as Moss imprinted the Name. Leo’s heart was a war drum of fear and anticipation, mind flipping through a dozen of terrifying and soothing scenarios every second.
“Voice call over a pretty long tunnel,” - the demon chirped from his headset. He pulled the headphones back on.
A simple single-tone beep. Again. Again. Again. No information.
He felt as if his mind was being torn apart by its own frenzy.
Again.
“Walking crisis?” - a familiar, painfully familiar voice, distorted by echoes and clipped by low bitrate. Distant, impossibly. But alive.
“Burning skyline,” - he was breaking up with tears he didn’t know he still had, - “It’s me.”
“Holy fucking shit. Are you safe? I love you,” - June was the same and different. Familiar and unknowable.
“I am. Are you safe? I love you.”
“I am. Fuck, you sound like nothing. I love you.”
“I am. You sound like the sea. I love you.”
“I am not. Where the fuck are you? How’d you break through?”
“Fake ID. Where are you? Is that gunfire in the background?”
“Closer than I was three years ago. Gunfire’s target practice. Staying with a family of Little Widows around Kursk Sear.”
“What the fuck?”
“They ain’t too bad, actually. I’m a month or two away, had to stall to save up cash.”
“Oh god please don’t tell me…”
“Shut up. I’ll do what I will. You aren’t stopping me this time.”
“Okay.”
“How did you get the ID?”
“I’m…” - he felt himself decohering, sapience sagging under the weight of the weeks. Few words remained behind his throat, and a sea of unspoken things, - “It hurt. It hurt so much.”