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Day 24: The Shame Returns, and fate steps in

futureccapeMeanwhile, back at the stuff …

Before me stood a white labcoat encrusted vision of awesomeness. His ignorance of my vanishing and my return meant he had no idea, no idea at all. He had walked directly into what clutches a man such as myself possessed, leathery and moist, and with gentle palpatations, fate was rubbing my facial features into a more pleased arrangement. If he thought me myself from an earlier time, then he would trust me, and i could isolate him, and slay him. This was too good to be true. Oh Tyra Banks, you are going to die. But how will that death affect me, and where was my Tyra Banks?

“Let’s get the Rock out of Here.” He was hip to my suggestion. Yep, still had it, my cool smoothness made it so basically no one could resist my suggestions. that and my magic amulet that made it impossible to resist my suggestions, or my hugs for that matter.

Thankfully, he complied with me, and unknowingly sealed his doom. He walked behind me, not realizing that that was my most dangerous side. This was going to be so easy. All i had to do was figure out where my past Me was, but alas, my memory was so foggy. I knew i had dissapeared… but to where. To be totally honest, the way this crazy universe works, I might nto even have returned from that vanishing. I, myself, might be merely a replicant, or some kind of avatar. I could be a backup. i could be anything. I wish i could remember.

But whwat was clear in my mind was that day, deep in earth’s future, when i decided I had to come back, had to derail my own adventure, destroy my own past, and thus, never be. Oh, for so many interesting reasons, but not reasons i will discuss at this time. Indeed, reasons that shan’t be discussed for some many thousands of words.

My torpidscraller was dark, no entries made during a large expanse of time, the blankness in the surface like a mote, a stain, on an otherwise shimmering sky. it was like looking at stars with a blasted dust cloud obscuring some of them, a hole in the sky. What lay beyond that cloud, what did the stars portend? I wished i knew.

The hospital behind me, I stood outside in the cool toronto air, the nights now growing colder as this ancient earth still experienced seasons, days and nights (of the formal variety, not of the artificial variety), weather, and salad. Oh to taste one of the delicious salads that earth had left behind, with so many other of her treasures. I was standing on land that, in my time, would be meters upon meters blow the surface, that some future archaeologist might dig up with hours of effort, to pick over the remnants. I wondered what he might find. I had a pen in my pocket, would he know what it was for? Would i have known what it was fore, during my first trip to this century? So many things i hadn’t known then. S o many flavors of life i had not tasted. So many colors, visions, so much to see with my eyes, my real real eyes. Such were the mysteries of time though, like an unfolding mist, they hide all but the mountaintops.

Lost in my conties, i awoke to find my old companion standing and waiting for me. There was a bond there, felt one way, but a bond nonetheless.

“You were lost in your conties, eh? Shouldn’t that be impossible? It’s so soon since your last conties.”

I suggested he drop the subject, and lo, he did. Amulet 1, Other people 0. On we walked around the corner to the campus of the lost university of toronto, many years hence it would sever all ties with the city and lift off into an artificial platform, hovering high above the metropolis below. Hanging there, it would one day vanish, to parts uinknown. legends speak of a flying university that landed on De Voor’s planet, who gave people degrees that didnt’ help them get jobs, infact, that made it harder to get jobs. History degrees, sociology degrees, semotics degrees. Everyone on De Voor’s planet, a planet known for its retail and hospitality economy, soon was peopled entirely by people who were overqualified for the jobs they had only days earlier had enjoyed. Everyone in the world was fired at once, because, claimed the prime minister, they would all quit soon to find better jobs because of the high rate of pay their university education’s entitled them too. There were no such jobs on De Voor’s planet, but that didnt’ matter. Soon the planet began relying on its mother planet, De Voor’s mother’s planet. Infusions of nutritional Sonnets were read aloud from an orbiting ship, and all below were bathed in the iambic protiens, absorbed through their mouthful skin.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this was that university, and I, one of the last humans to see it before its dissapearance. Either way, we rushed into its campus, towards a large circle of grass surrounded by a paved walkway for the RoundLegs to roll on. In one of the narrows between the buildings, i turned on my former partner. he stood, eyes ablaze, gazing back at me, as though somehow, impossibly, he knew what i had in mind. There’s no way he could know, its impossible. I had better not take any chances. I cleared my mind of any thoughts of harm, and returned to my previous course, towards the large ominous looking building, covered in ivy, hanging over the yard like an ogre.

As we strolled, we saw a man and woman, their postures indicating some tension, the man with his hands between the two, the woman with hers in her pockets. She shook her head, as if to say “nope”, and he entreated. It was clear, under the dim illumination of the lamps above, that he was begging her. She wasnt’ having any of it. Thw two, no more than larvae, continued in this way for some time, until finally she kissed him gingerly on the cheek, and turned away, rushing towards parts unknown in the dim cool canadian night. The man, standing watching her leave, shoulders slumped and mood clearly defeated, seemed to lose ocular fluid. Tears, i remembered. Tears. My instincts took over.

“hey nerd. Why didnt’ she want to date you?”

“Yeah,” chimed in my partner. “What did you do wrong that made her not love you, that’s what I’d like to know. It was probably something you said, you shoudl think back and figure out exactly where you went wrong. Want my help?”

“hey nerd,” i repeated, “don’t worry. Everyone wont’ know the bad details until a week or so, when she posts them on the little dog. The little white dog.”

My former colleague corrected me, “the dog doesnt’ exist yet. THey ahve the internet here.” Had i given myself away? The white dog didnt’ even exist in my time… could he conclude that I’d been to his? Would he piece it together? I redoubled my funny mocking to take my mind of things and put me at ease.

“hey nerd!”

“WHAT! Leave me alone!” What a funny nerd. He talked right to us, even though he was crying two streams of shameful tears down onto his shirt, which i assumed was his favourite shirt. I also assumed that tears are acidic and eat through clothes, because i wanted to assume he was a real loser.

“This is great,” mentioned my former partner. “My suit is almost at full power, this is amazing. his shame is absurdly high. That doesnt’ even make sense, he’s got all his limbs, nice clothes, a decent future, and apparently rich parents. Why would he feel shame? i guess that doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah” i responded, vocally.

“yeah what?”, he replied, also vocally.

Sweat shot out of my poors like guilt oozing out of a Screepatch. He hadn’t said anything, he was thinking it. We’re connected via Psychic Vampire link. And that link was laying eggs, Psychic Vampire eggs. When his eggs hatched in me, he heard my thoughts, and vice versa. Were his hatching yet? If they had, then, he would KNOW! he would know I meant him harm, that he was to die, that he HAD to die, he would know my resolve, my need! I had to act fast. I had mere moments. I grabed my magic amulet, which hid a small weapon, a kind of pistol that you swallowed and shot out of your slowly growing hair. Down it went, and my hair i tilted towards him. he seemed unaware. The growth continued, the pistol now weaving its keratinous form between my follicles. It would be mere moments now, perhas semi moments, perhaps fewer. Perhaps seimic moments, those transitory fleeting seconds that also caused shudders in people’s spines. No more time, his face had changed. He was aware. I had no more time, none. I fired, whether it would be premature i didnt’ know.

The hair gun squeezed out its projectile, and as it careened towards my prey, i saw it as though in slow motion. his primitive symmetrical body twisted to avoid the impending and mortal bullet, his face a tight contortion of fear and surprise. In my thorasic navel my two hearts pounded anxiety through my veins, my lungs and gills almost still, almost silent. I was hyperaware, my body sensing everything, seeing everything, in all directions, its strange shape a product of that wonderful deterministic suit’s ingenuity, all those years ago, yet only hours ago here, in this bygone age. My body’s assimilation of all this sensory information, these smells, sights, the puffs of my charmsack, the secretions of my olfactory globe, and the vision, glorious ocular vision, in all directions, it all converged into a single vivid impression. As the bullet touched the skin of Tyra Banks it vanished, and with it, Tyra.

“Now who’s the nerd?”

“Beep beep,” i beeped, sullen, lost, and a failure.

to be continued…

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