[24FEB2015]
Emptiness. A vast, deepening emptiness is what I felt at Hope’s encouraging smile.
Scant moments before the Void swallowed me up and rendered her, the Isle, and everything irrelevant.
I could feel it before it happened, the growing loss of breath and the tightening in my chest, that significant shift the seizes my heart in a loving death grip. The maw of Nothing opening up, unseen by all but me, yawning wide like that fanged sand vagina in those Star Trek Wars movies Jin likes and then swallowing up my frail, mortal body. The sensation of falling should frighten me but it doesnt. The Program gave us children over to the Void too long ago to recall, memories fractured and fragmented, and only given back to us in just enough pieces to ensure we could still function.
We learned to embrace the Void. Like a mother’s last cold embrace. Like the caress of a lover at that last goodbye.
We learned to welcome oblivion.
But… strangely, I couldn’t accept that tonight. Not in it’s entirely.
The Void. The Outer Darkness. It was everything and nothing. A shadow realm of near shapeless desolation. A place of too many predators and not enough prey, monster feeding on monster. An erroneous testament to some mortal entertainer’s long, lost We All Float Down Here where the truth is far worse than the imagining. Long attuned to the perpetual darkness, I can make out the despondent landscape of dead trees moored to rocky outcroppings, charcoal black against midnight; the ground would be barren if not for the scatter bone splinters, the remnants of some great thing’s meal left to calcify despite the distinct lack of atmosphere.
Striking the hard ground wasn’t nearly as bothersome as the sudden reminder that there was no air. The Void… it wasn’t a planet. It didn’t play by any known rules. How the Program harnessed any of it’s power was impossible to fathom.
The burning sensation in my chest, the loss of the last of my oxygen, was punctuated by my own strangled, half mad laughter. Goodbye, sweet air. The sweet suffocation that lasted only scant moments before the alien part of my DNA asserted itself and breathing ceased to become a concern. I could feel it beneath my skin, crawling and shifting, tickling at my organs and at the back of my mind. Once upon a time I would have responded to it like a lost friend, or perhaps more like a lover.
Once upon a time I would have reacted to all of this differently.
I would have welcomed it.
But there was a time I had nothing to compare it to. There was a time that I didn’t so much revel in my depravity as I revelled in the fact that I was very good at it and that every aspect of that existence provided my fractured psyche with a measure of comfort. I had a purpose. A reason to be more than just the sum of my reassembled parts, human and otherwise, and was put to some use, no matter how nefarious. I supposed even I need to belong, don’t I?
But, at the back of my mind, there was something telling me I no longer belonged here, no matter what my cells were crying for beneath my skin.
I couldn’t revel in this.
I could remember revelling in her kisses, melting in the warm embrace of lithesome arms that were greedy and possessive; they were tender and real. I could remember the brilliant while of her smile, the hoarse hitch after too much tinkling girlish laughter, and the half-amused roll of molten chocolate eyes. Those eyes, I struggle to find a time when the didn’t threaten to draw me in and consume me, hot in anger and passion, placid pools of comfort in her gentler moments. A touch, a look, a whispered word: These were humanizing things I never considered. Never considered living with… let alone without.
No, the Void was no longer a comfort.
She was.
But where is she now? The question came as a surprise, out of the air and as something heavy stamped down on my chest and threatened to pin me to the ground. Who will hold you now? Why not Us?
It had no physical form that I could make out, but the pressure threatening to crack my ribs was as really as any harm I’d ever received. I was never a stranger to pain, to agony, but couldn’t think straight enough to find a replay, from lips or mind.
Hush, now. No need to reply. We know your thoughts. Your heart. We assumed you would welcome Us inside your consciousness, with all of the other voices having been silenced. This is what you’ve been wanting, yes? Guidance. We can give you that. Guidance. Answers. All of the universe’s mysteries can be laid bare at your feet. All you need to do is give in… Become one with Us.
The pressure on my chest increased. I felt a rib buckle and crack.
Join Us and have Everything and Nothing. Time means nothing here. Your precious little paramour will have already moved on. You meant little to the Mandalorian anyway; nothing more than a passing fancy. The rest are too stupid or vapid to concern themselves with the memory of even your name for overly long. Your Mother was right about that much, ignorant automaton that she is. You could leave of your own free will, We suppose, but to what end? The world has already moved on without you. Become one with Us. Give in.
Attacking my doubt. Clever. I was intimately familiar with the tactic. I had used in numerous times in extracting information and couldn’t deny the merits of the approach. Worst still?
It was working.
I could grit my teeth and furrow my brow all I wanted, but it did nothing to change the reality that the words could be true. It is easier to doubt the good things than the bad. My vision blurred…
I didn’t have any pride…
So why not just give in?
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