"The Forest World" (Part 5 of 5)

Part 4 to this story posted previously (here)

“Stay with me to the end.” She asked, having to speak in a normal tone to be heard through the wind, even though her face was leaned against my shoulder.

“I will.” I agreed. “The war will end, you know, at least for now. I think this will be its last battle.”

She nodded, and swallowed. “That’s something.” The leaves were whipping about in the air, but none of them came within a foot of us, as if we were in a bubble. I noticed that the wind seemed to be moving to the right no matter where I looked - as if it was circling the two of us. “Matt, do you think I have a soul?” She asked suddenly.

“What?” I asked.

“I mean, do you think there will be an afterlife for a person you imagined?” Her voice was brittle, like the slightest touch would shatter its composed veneer.

I squeezed my eyes shut. The simple question deserved weeks of thought, and I had probably ten minutes before the question was answered for her, one way or the other. “I don’t... I don’t know.” I admitted. “But I hope so.”

“Oh?” She looked up to me hopefully.

“You are genuine. You are more a person, more human than I ever learned to be.” I replied as the wind again gusted. In the distance there was a crashing sound, as if a tree had fallen.

“You’re human, Matt.” Laura’s head again fell to rest on my shoulder. “I think you just want to think you aren’t, it makes things make more sense to you.”

“I just killed you.” I replied, and my voice cracked considerably. “I was able to do it. I’m a monster, Laura. Have been for some time.”

The wind was now an even roar, as loud as the gusts had been, though it didn’t seem to touch us. The branches of trees just at the edges of my vision were all being shaken and pulled, and the leaf litter around them was blowing into the air. “No.” She replied. “You cared enough about me to let me choose.”

Tears stung my eyes, and I blinked them back. I could feel that sensation cascading down to the baseline world, where I became conscious of the fact that it was dark, and that I was alone, so no-one would notice. As soon as I had verified this, though, I dived back in to be with Laura. I didn’t answer her, I just held her in what I hoped was a comforting way, as the blowing wall of dead leaves and sticks grew closer to us, closer to the bole of the great ash tree which we both stood below. As trees vanished behind this maelstrom, there were crashing noises, as if they were being shredded by the wind. “Not long now.” I finally said numbly. For some reason, my words carried over the sounds of the world’s oncoming end.

“Will you be okay?” She asked shakily.

“When this world is gone, I will be left in a void in my mind, which is full of voids.” I offered the explanation to console her. “The destruction of this world will not harm me in that way.” I had to use that caveat - I already suspected what would become of me and my war.

“Okay.” She breathed into my shoulder. The wall of wind was now only a dozen yards away, closing at a steady rate of a few inches every second. “Did you plan this show out for me, Matt?”

“I didn’t.” I admitted. “Ending in a windstorm, though, seems fitting.”

“The birds knew before we did.” Laura gave a breathy, dry laugh. “I don’t envy that knowledge.”

I nodded silently. Now the wind was beginning to spiral around us, too, swirling up from the ground, lifting Laura’s hair to brush against her face and mine. Some leaves, too, were lifted, but only a few of the lightest, driest ones.

I watched the wall of wind and debris close to five yards, then four, neither of us speaking. What could I say to her? The raw emotion that was coursing through my veins in lieu of blood was wordless, soundless, hopeless. I couldn’t possibly begin. I didn’t want her to be destroyed, but that was already done - I had already murdered Laura by pulling the ruling thread out of her reality. I wanted to tell her so many things, but my mouth stayed closed - I didn’t want to make this last span of her existence as much a heartbreak for her as it was already going to be for me. Heartbreak, of course, is the correct term - I realized then that I bore inexplicable, unbounded love for this person, who was about to cease to exist, to leave no trace in the world, in any world.

The wall of wind was mere feet away now, and I could see that it was not flat - it was curved, the edges of a contracting sphere of chaos. As the top of this sphere drew down, the light itself faded out, leaving Laura and myself clinging to each other in an ever-smaller space surrounded, I knew, by intellectual void.

“Will it hurt?” She asked quietly. Despite the cacophony, I could still hear her perfectly.

“No more than drifting off to sleep, Laura.” I replied, unsure but trying to sound confident in my suspicions. “Sleep well, Laura, and dream of better worlds than I could ever have shown you.”

She looked up at me for a brief moment, and I saw a single tear break free from one eye and trickle a jagged, wind-blown path down her cheek. “Thank you, Matt. I - ”

I felt the touch of the debris vortex on my feet and head, and drew back, out of the world, into the baseline. I found myself next to a guard-rail overlooking the decorative pond on the north side of campus. It was late, perhaps two in the morning, and the cool air was painting me a very clear picture of where the tears had tracked down my face, and dripped onto my collar. I gripped the guard-rail, leaning on it for support, and took a few breaths, before diving back into my mind and entering The Room. The fire was far lower than its norm, and a very deep shade of blue.

You promised her you would end this. The words of my second pattern rang out immediately. To suspend her in that state is...  Wrong.

“I can’t do it, my friend.” I whispered, shaking. “I can’t go back there and feel her dissolve from my arms. I can’t. It will kill me too.”

Doubtful. The parts of the whole that are most at risk are those that cause the most conflict anyway. Came the reply. You must be strong. I cannot enter worlds without you, you know that.

“I wouldn’t ask you to.” I managed to get in. “Imagine, this is your fault.” I called out lamely, not that Imagine was conscious.

Imagine’s usually confident, cock-sure female voice was broken, shaky in my mind. “I did not want this, my old friend.” It seemed to say. “This was not supposed to happen. You were supposed to choose her over the world that so hurt you, and instead look at what you have done. You could probably have preserved that world from the madness, and lived there for all time. Do not place blame for this tragedy upon me.”

“I could not choose that world over the baseline.” I shouted back. In the baseline, this shout escaped my lips as a loud whisper. “I couldn’t.”

I could tell that my mind’s impression of Imagine was accurate - it was weak, perhaps dying. “Why not?” These two words came unbidden into my consciousness, barely a broken whisper, a dying breath.

“Because...“ I started, but trailed off. “Because it would be wrong...” I lamely finished, after a few seconds, clinging to morality out of the same desperation that a drowning man clings to the lifeguard saving him.

There was no reply. Imagine, in my mind’s self-generated impression, did not have a retort for this argument.

Finish what you promised, and our war is over. My second pattern said after several minutes of silence. Then we can rest, we can learn to live in our worlds in peace.

“But no matter how much I look in those worlds, I’ll never find her again, or anyone like her.” I pointed out.

The baseline holds many real people like yourself. Perhaps even like her.

“And I hope they never have the misfortune of crossing paths with me.” I replied angrily. “Don’t you see? Imagine’s way would have saved everyone! It would have put me out of the position to bring any harm to any person, except Laura. My friend, what have we done? At what cost have we come to win our war?”

At great cost, my friend. The second pattern’s voice never held tone or inflexion, it was only words, but this time I thought I detected a hint of pain in it then. But we have preserved the integrity of our being, and we need not maintain the moral contradiction of keeping an intelligent prisoner in a fabricated world.

I nodded. “Was it worth it?” I asked.

Let us live, friend, and in years to come you can answer that for yourself.

I moved to stand over the dying fire - I could tell now that it was dying - and stared into the flickering blue abyss. “Is Imagine right?” I asked. “Could I have made that world proof against the storm of madness?

Unknown. However, it was unknown until recently that worlds could be destroyed by force of will, so the possibility exists. Would you willingly live in a world of lies, and deceive someone you love into accepting it as truth? Could you do that forever, my friend?

“I don’t know.” I admitted.

Then let us not speculate further.

“Let me at least sleep through the night, I will re-enter The Forest tomorrow and end this.”

That compromise seems fair.

Rather than respond, I pulled out of The Room and hurriedly wiped my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, then headed for the dormitories, checking the time as I went on my watch. It was three fifteen, give or take, and I had class at nine.

Rather than bother with conventions like a shower or changing into the loose athletic shorts that passed for my sleeping garb, I merely snuck into the room, under the light-blocking curtain, and up into my bed. I thought I would have trouble sleeping, but sleep came in an instant.

---

It was not the next day, or the day after, or the one after that, but I eventually did feel the strength in me to take on the daunting task of seeing my intellectual and emotional murder through. None of my friends or room-mates knew it, but that unseasonably cold early fall day was my birthday. They didn’t know because I didn’t tell them, and no-one felt they were close enough to me to ask when it was that my age changed its numbering. My parents called and wished me a half-hearted ‘happy birthday’ at lunch, but the call quickly devolved into snooping into my personal life, asking if I had a girlfriend yet, that sort of thing, so I lied to them, claimed I had remembered I was late to a study session, and ended the call.

In truth, it was their snooping that reminded me that Laura, suspended in time, was still waiting for my presence to finish dying. For some days I had avoided letting my mind be idle enough for my second pattern’s voice to become apparent, and I had not made use of any of my worlds save the baseline. I didn’t want to think, I just wanted to buy time, but I knew that day that I could not begin to heal those hurts until I was done inflicting them.

The blue fire in The Room was barely sufficient to see my usual chair by, it had gone down to the point of being only bluish-black embers glowing on the hearth. Occasionally, the embers would shift, and there would be a flash of brighter light.

You have not fulfilled your promise. My second pattern greeted me. But I sense that you plan to, today.

“Tonight.” I replied. “Let the sun set, let me find privacy.”

Agreed. I trust you. It would be destruction to doubt you.

I nodded, stayed a few moments to watch the blue light crawl across the embers, then backed out and went about my day, trying not to think of the night’s planned grim task.

The night was clear, sharply cold, enough so that even the usual sparse traffic on the campus footpaths had all retreated to seek warmth indoors. It was eleven thirty, or thereabouts, when I stepped outside, and I took a brief time to walk to a safe, relatively hidden place, where I sat down and dived into my own mind, sifting about for the box labeled “The Forest.” Finding it, I hesitated.

A wordless, toneless, expressionless frown radiated from my second pattern. Taking a deep breath, I upended The Forest for the last time.

The vortex inched down, and I could feel it dissolving Laura, but she clung tighter even as her form turned to mist. I almost relented, I almost pulled out of the world to find a way, any way, to undo the damage I had done, to call all of this a bad joke, to have a good laugh, and to leave the woods with her, arm in arm, to see about getting her home. A life unfolded before me in that moment, a life of us kissing on the second date and of her confessing to me that she suspected I was ‘the one’ after six weeks. A life where I proposed to her, and we were married a week after graduation in the beautiful chapel on the hill across town from State’s campus, and where we had a lovely honeymoon cruise in the Mediterranean, after which I took a job to support her, and she chased her dream of becoming a writer. A life where I was promoted to management in only two years, and became good friends with one of the company VPs. A life where Laura’s second book, finished after our son was born, made enough money over the decades to fund my run for city councilor, then the subsequent run for mayor, then after that my play for the local congressional seat. A life where I was pulled out of a committee meeting in Washington to get the news that I was a grandfather of twin girls, beautiful, healthy babies born to my son’s beautiful wife, who we were proud to call daughter-in-law. A life where Laura and I retired to live in a house by a lake, where those grand-daughters came to visit often, but in between we just walked at our aged pace through the quiet woods around our home, remembering the day we’d met, when we walked similar woods, and we laughed about how crazy I’d been, to think a world as beautiful as ours to be all in my head.

Almost, though, never became a reality. Laura became void in my arms, and was gone, there was no more wind, no more woods, nothing. I was suspended in senseless void, and my mind rebelled from it, and reflexively backed out.

Only then did I let the emotions get to me. Even in the baseline, I dropped to one knee because standing seemed impossible, and one hand stabilized me, resting on the cruelly-cold concrete path. I had killed her to end my war, and it was indeed over, for the time being at least. I felt like I should be celebrating, but felt more like dying.

After several deep breaths, I re-entered my mind and found The Room, gratefully entering, dropping into its chair as an exhausted soldier newly home from the front.

It is done. Came the words of my second pattern the moment I was inside.

“I killed her.” I agreed numbly. The embers were almost burned out, and I moved to watch them.

You did what you promised to do.

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

How do you feel?

I watched one ember finally go out forever, then another. “I feel...” There were dozens going out now, and the wan light was dimming further. “Broken. As dead as she is.”

The last embers winked out, and I, all the components of my mind, were cast into darkness. I welcomed it as a blessing, because darkness seemed a fitting companion, it promised nothing, but nothing was just what I was looking for, just what I deserved, welcome.

"The Forest World" (Part 4 of 5)

Part 3 to this story posted previously (here)

I backed out of the world quickly and focused on my senses in the baseline. I closed my eyes, standing there in the woods that had been the model for The Forest, and listened. The wind was stronger out here than it was in the world in my head, and the birds were singing. I couldn’t hope to identify what kinds of birds they were, but I could bring the experience back in, and hopefully it would patch from my experiences. Forcing a world patch was always hit-or-miss, this was the best way I knew to do it painlessly.

I stayed still, listening like that for a full minute, then re-opened The Forest’s little box in my mind, returning to where I stood when I left. “Hang on for what?” Laura was asking.

The trip out was so short that I knew what she was referring to immediately, and I didn’t bother answering. I remembered the sounds of the birds, and then focused on the silence. Why was I not hearing any birds here? “Birds don’t sing much if there’s a storm coming.” I finally answered. I recognized the patched fact, and rolled with it.

“That makes sense. Any idea how long we have?” Laura either didn’t notice the patch or played along with it.

“Before what?” I asked.

“The storm?” Laura replied, as if that was obvious. It probably should have been.

“Oh.” I looked up to the sky. I could see a few clouds through the trees, but it was still mostly blue up there. “Long enough.” I decided to answer. I wasn’t even sure if the weather here could storm, unless one of us patched in a storm. “I’ll let you know when you should worry about it.”

“Presumably by running for cover.” She shot back.

“Maybe.” I jokingly agreed. Strange, I noticed, that we were trading mildly light-hearted quips when she thought I was a lost cause schizophrenic ten minutes before.

Then I stopped, and realized the timeline formula this world must be following, and backed out again, and as soon as my senses saw the baseline world again, I leaned against a tree, feeling rather weak. It was so simple, so straightforward, The Forest was put together by Imagine for a single purpose. My subconscious had decided to take its own track to solving my solitary existence.

I felt my second pattern’s pique at thinking of my existence as solitary, but both parts of me knew what was meant by that so I didn’t bother explaining. I felt nauseous at the idea of having a captive companion in my head, not just out of concern for the captive but out of the dangerous precedent that set for my rational thinking processes. The worlds in my mind were not there to replace my existence in the baseline, but to supplement it, to make it bearable. To quantify and segregate the parts of my mind that would otherwise defy my focus, taint reality with mad hallucinations. If those worlds were capable of sustaining sentient life outside my own - and by all indications Laura was a sentience inside a mental world - there would be serious ramifications.

My mind supplied my imagination a spurt of impish laughter again, and despite knowing that it was merely my own habit I scowled to no-one in particular, feeling outmaneuvered. I’d fallen into a trap, I sensed. That part didn’t bother me as much as the idea that the bait was an apparently sentient person, a girl named Laura, who seemed like a perfectly nice person, if one with a bit of a temper. Was there a part of me so monstrous as to use thinking beings as pawns, toys in the war for control of my mind?

Imagine’s false laughter ringing in my ears, I started back towards my dormitory building, feeling the beginnings of a black mood set in. I knew that I couldn’t get that pawn off the chessboard without destroying it - even to never visit The Forest again would be to leave open the possibility for my subconscious tricking my focus back into it in an idle moment. I wasn’t even sure I could destroy a world if I wanted to, and I certainly didn’t want to in this case.

“Hey, there you are, Matt!” I had reached the door to the room without really processing the walk, and James looked up from his desk adjacent to mine. “Where you been all afternoon?”

“Just getting fresh air.” I replied tiredly. I had no energy for pretending a good mood, and James knew me well enough not to press the point. He just shrugged and went back to whatever he’d been doing, leaving me to sit at my own desk and pretend to read a textbook for a few minutes while I came dangerously close to surrendering, letting my subconscious, my imagination, and my dark impulses win the war in my mind if only Laura could live. The thing that kept me from doing so was the knowledge that this would never guarantee her safety, even nestled inside The Forest.

Inordinate concern for the well being of the enigma Laura. The second pattern said, dragging me gently into our stone-walled, metaphysical sanctum.

I got up from the chair. I didn’t know I could do that, but somehow I did. I moved over to the mantle, and leaned on the stonework over the blue-tongued fire, staring down into its heart. “Laura is not an enigma. Her origins are. You saw. She’s an observer-level thinking being.”

The ability to collapse world uncertainty into patched facts is indeed troublesome. Extremely dangerous. First concern must be for personal integrity. The words bore with them the implication of being chosen carefully to advise caution.

“Personal integrity?” I echoed. “Look at us, my friend, does any of this suggest personal integrity?”

Mental structure has never fit a standard mold, but it has been stable. Instability will show, will crack the defenses.

“Defenses?” I clenched my teeth, a gesture that I could feel affect my baseline world form as well. “What good are defenses against this? I’d shed them all if it meant allowing Laura to live outside my head.”

On this we agree. But we can also agree that that’s not possible. She’s trapped more completely than it is in our power to undo.

I let the rough stone of the mantle arch press against a forehead I’d never had in The Room and stared into the fire, agreeing with my second pattern by not contesting. Every second in The Forest was dangerous, Laura could unknowingly patch my memories at any time, but at the same time I liked her, and my stomach twisted with guilt at the idea that a part of my mind had put her into the position she was in.

There’s only one way to solve this, my friend. The second pattern eventually broke in. Give her the choice. Let her choose what is to be done with The Forest, and then do it.

“I will.” I agreed. “You’re right.”

---

The next day I returned to The Forest, forcing composure upon myself. The days blur together in my mind, here. The events in the baseline world seemed pointless by comparison to my time in The Forest, and I lost the ability to associate the two clearly. I could not tell you when I left this world and what I did in the time I focused on the baseline world. In The Forest, it didn’t matter anyway - I always came back exactly when I had left.

I walked with her for what felt like hours, letting her tell her life story, and I did not ask what was patched and what wasn’t. I didn’t have the heart to bring up the choice one of us would eventually have to make - and she either didn’t realize it or didn’t want to bring it up. Every so often, the wind would gust, first gently, barely above a stiff breeze, but later, stronger. Soon we learned to stop talking to allow the wind to die down, else we were drowned out by the sounds of the wind-buffeted canopy. Despite the wind, not so much as a leaf fell down to the ground around us. The trees bent and roared, but did not break.

We completed a wide loop, returning to the footbridge where we’d talked, and I led the way down another side path, intending to chart another wide loop, but Laura stopped below a large ash tree and sat down against its trunk. “Let’s stop for a bit, Matt.” She suggested, and I complied, sitting a respectful distance around the tree from her, but not so far that we couldn’t see one another if we wanted to. The wind gusted again, and I could see Laura shiver, though what reached us, shielded in the woods, was barely a whispered breeze.

“You all right?” I asked.

“That wind is unsettling, is all.” She replied. “You sure the storm’s still a ways off?”

“Should be.” I confirmed, with a certainty I didn’t really feel. In theory, the storm would split us up, so it would hold off until this conversation ran its course, if my understanding of The Forest was sound.

“That’s good.” She sounded comforted. “Hey, Matt, it’s your turn.”

“My turn?”

“To tell me about you. Outside your questionable sanity.” She shifted her posture to face me better. “If I’m in your head I think that sort of thing might be important for me to know.”

I smiled. “I suppose so. You already know I’m a loner. Stories I tell will only ever have one character.”

“That can’t always be true. People don’t live like that. What is it that made you who you are?” She asked.

I tried to look into her eyes to gauge motives for the question. I tried to raise my eyes to meet the gaze of a person who was my better, who I had no business speaking to. But every time I got close, my eyes instinctively dodged to the side, as if they were afraid. I gave up, and leaned back against the tree bark, closing my eyes. “I honestly don’t know. I didn’t wake up one day with a fresh certainty that I should protect others from myself, you know. That sort of thing builds over time.”

“You were mistreated?” She asked. “Someone told you you were a menace so long that you started believing it?”

“No.” I shook my head. “No-one did this to me. Don’t try to blame anyone for me. No-one wore me down, because I can’t remember the last time I let anyone close enough for that to actually hurt.”

“I don’t believe that.” She insisted. “You’re too logical, too reasonable, to get the way you are without - ”

“Without reason?” I smiled. “I have a good reason. I am a destroyer by nature, Laura. The closer someone gets to me, the more they are damaged. I learned this early on, and I keep my own counsel to protect others. It’s not intentional, it just... happens.”

“But you said that all this came from your mind. Looks like creation to me.” She probably waved around for emphasis, but my eyes were still closed so I didn’t see.

“That’s the point.” I agreed. “I dreamed of worlds where I was not the walking curse that it was becoming apparent I was, and found those dreams to my liking. But I can’t live in them. I exist in the baseline world, I always have to go back there.” I took a deep breath. “But I don’t want to dwell on my own problems, my own mistakes. I don’t do self-pity, remember? I play the hand I’ve been dealt and move on.”

“Moving on never looked so much like going in circles.” Laura replied, and that stung, but I couldn’t think of a proper retort.

Rather than spend a lot of time trying to think of a way to dispute her observation, I went on to tell her everything - about my second pattern, about the conglomeration of subconscious forces I’d taken to calling Imagine, about the other worlds, or at least the most significant ones. I told her about my room-mates Adam, Rob, and James, about everyone who’s ever been close enough to me that I have considered letting them inside my defenses, letting them see who I am. I’d never really let anyone in, of course - I knew any sane person would be terrified of what they saw, and I didn’t blame them. I told her about the times I’d thought others might be like me, the times I’d managed to work up a bit of hope and had it crushed to nearly nothing by reality. I told her about my predictions as to the soon-coming end of my life, the endgame to this contest in my mind, between my consciousness and my dark subconscious, allied with my demons, a war in which both sides wielded imagination with all the precision and subtlety of ballistic nuclear missiles. I predicted to her the coming nuclear winter, the destruction of both sides, and of how I often wished this burnt-out finale was sooner coming.

She occasionally asked questions, but didn’t try to contradict me through any of it. She’d been so willing to do so before, and this change of habit confused me. I didn’t bring it up, though.

When I had run out of things to say, she didn’t speak for several seconds. I could see that there was no longer doubt in her mind that this was all just a fabricated world, perhaps my descriptions of things outside it had provided her contrast to see the flaws in The Forest. We were still seated below that big ash tree, and the intermittent gusts of wind seem so far off above us.

The one thing I hadn’t told her about was her own role in my internal struggles. Imagine had tried to force peace of mind on me by providing me a confidant, in exchange for violating or even forfeiting my morality. That morality was the only reason I had left to fight - I had long ago lost any visceral desire to win, but I kept holding on because I knew I was right, and that Imagine was, not evil, but the manner through which the evil I had kept suppressed could be released. To accept Laura as a permanent fixture of my mind would be the equivalent of a white flag. But as my second pattern had suggested rightly, it wasn’t my decision to make.

“If you could go back and live differently, would you?” She eventually asked.

I nodded without thinking. “Asked that way, yes. Without a doubt. But that’s not the important question.”

“Then what is?“

“The one that keeps me up at night. All my life I’ve been motivated by trying to do what was right. Would, the second time through, I be able to find a place where, looking back, I made the wrong choice? Or would I have to intentionally contradict my morality to change the outcome?”

She considered this for some time. “I think you would find the place where you made a mistake, Matt. It was probably a simple thought, a small thing.”

I nodded slowly. “I hope so. The alternative is an unbearable thought.”

“You don’t really want to lose your mind, Matt.” She put her hand on my arm, and this time it stayed long past the awkward threshold, I raised an eyebrow, but didn’t interrupt. “You want to change.”

“I don’t know how to change anymore.” I admitted. “I only know how to be changed. But whether or not I lose my mind isn’t my decision.”

She cocked her head to one side. “Whose else could it be?”

I covered her hand with my own. “Yours, Laura. A choice I want you to make, where none of the outcomes are good. But it’s not mine to make for you.”

“I can’t decide the fate of your sanity, Matt. If I could I would choose for you to remain who you are.” She didn’t shrink from the touch of my hand, which came as a shock to me. What did she see in me that allowed her to tolerate me like this? Perhaps - I could almost not think it - perhaps she harbored actual positive feelings for this wretch?

“Let me finish.” I held up three fingers. “Option one, I let this world, The Forest, stay as it is. I visit as I have been. Short term, no change, but over time the accidental patching will drive me mad. I don’t know how long it will take. Option two, I leave this world, close it up in a box, stop the clock and try never to come back. You will not notice - you will only experience time when I fail and find myself here. In the end, I will be destroyed in the same way as option one, only over more time - I might get months, or years, longer.“ I knew that this second option was the easiest for me, the path that allowed me to make the easiest, least permanent decision, but I didn’t tell her that. ”Option three...” I shook my head. “Option three is...”

“What?” She shook my arm. “It can’t be so bad.”

“Option three is that I try to tear this world apart. I destroy The Forest for all time, severing all connections it makes in my mind, ending your life.” I moved to stand, and she did the same, releasing my arm. “If I succeed, I may manage to preserve the status quo, or even gain a little ground back. I am fond of you, Laura, but I know that was intended - this world’s purpose is to shatter my mind, bit by bit. I don’t know what it would mean to fail, perhaps nothing would happen.”

The wind gusted again, and the ash tree we stood beside creaked. Laura did not immediately respond, letting the wind die down before speaking. “I don’t want to die, Matt.” She said calmly. “If I’m really in your head, is there no way to escape?” Her tone was still calm, but her eyes pleaded for a way out. It broke my heart to see that.

I looked down at my feet. “You don’t just live in this world. You are this world, Laura.” I kicked at a small stone, and watched it bounce away from me into the underbrush. “You can’t exist without it, or it without you. Carefully devised to be sympathetic enough to me that I would have to keep coming back, even knowing what it would do to me. The sad thing is, if I do lose what’s left of my mind none of my worlds will survive, not even this one. It’s not your fault. But it’s working. I...” I stopped. I had almost said to her that I thought I loved her. I didn’t want to lay that, too, on her shoulders.

“So you can’t make a decision that harms another, that harms me, but you think I will for you?” She stepped back. “What do you think I am going to say?”

“Something wiser than I can decide myself.” I answered. “The best I can offer is a temporary life, until my time here breaks me down into madness. In this world’s time, it would likely only be a day or two.” Not including how much she would accidentally patch me while dreaming, if she could dream. That was probably the biggest wild card - probably, she would destroy me by accident with contradicting patches as soon as she fell asleep.

“A day or two...” She echoed distantly. “What if I didn’t make any... patches?” She seemed uncomfortable with this term. “What if we both ran in opposite directions and never saw each other again?”

“You would wander a world filled with shallow people, who seem flat and one-dimensional, because they are. Each one would be a patched person, and you’d know it. You and I are the only ones here who can think. And even still you would patch me, Laura. You don’t need to be near something to patch it. Geography, history, technology, politics, and more, you patch the whole world when you think too hard about these things, and I am in that world. You’d just do it less often. You might buy yourself a few days that way, but I can’t think of a worse hell than that life.” I gestured back to the path. “If you want to do that, though, I will play along. I will give you those days if you want them. It’s the least I can do.”

She stared blankly at me for a full thirty seconds, mind at work, before she looked away and visibly sagged.

“You probably hate me.” I pointed out. “You’re entitled to. This isn’t your war.”

She looked up at me, and our eyes met, this time mine did not shy away. I saw not hate, not anger, not frustration, none of what I expected - I just saw a heartbroken solemnity, and I knew she had decided. “Answer me this. Why did you let this go on for so long if I’m such a danger to you? Why not just end this yourself as soon as you knew?”

“Because...” I pinched the bridge of my nose and avoided eye contact. “Because I could tell you were... human. More than myself, I think.. But I... I wanted to give you a few hours. Trade some of my sanity away to give you some life. You should have gotten more than I can possibly give you, and I’m sorry I can’t provide.”

Laura surprised me again by stepping forward and putting her hands on my shoulders. “You didn’t have to do that.” She said.

“It doesn’t matter if I wanted to or not. I did, so you can assume I wanted to.” I offered a wan smile. “You can assume that I have no regrets, because when I tell you that I don’t, you don’t have any evidence to the contrary.”

There was a brief silence. “I won’t try to say anything about fair, or what either of us deserve.” Laura replied slowly. “Except that this isn’t fair, that both of us deserve better.”

“You’re probably right.” I agreed. “But we have to work with what we have.” I looked around at the forest, the big ash tree standing over us, wanting the impossible, to be able to show her other worlds, more fantastic ones. That was just as impossible as showing her the baseline reality, just as impossible as showing Rob or anyone else from the baseline this world any other beyond their own. “I want to give you more than this, I wish I could. Compared to the other things my mind comes up with, it’s... dull.”

“Dull?” She smiled. “Not really. Matt, you know what I’m going to tell you to do.”

“I do. But I won’t be able to bring myself to do it unless you tell me to.” I admitted. “Even then, I might not be able to.” A gust of wind picked up, greater than the previous ones, and even down below the trees it kicked up fallen leaves and pulled at our clothing.

“Then I will say it clearly. Matt...” She suddenly let her arms slide down and under my own, to encircle behind my back. She had seemed taller than me earlier, but somehow now she was able to comfortably rest her head on my shoulder. “Hold me close, and end this charade. Go and live out there, but don’t forget, okay?”

I complied numbly, letting my arms wrap around her. I held Laura in my arms, trying not to think about the possibility that the embrace was more than that of friends, feeling her shiver a little in the wind or from fear and wanting only to comfort her. “I’ll never forget.” I promised. Then I backed out just a little from the world, let it go hazy and purplish with mental distance, and looked at it with the aim I’d never before even wanted - I looked for a way to destroy that world.

Imagine’s false voice in my ear whispered that all I really needed to do was back out and throw The Forest into the same pile as all the “XXX” boxes, but I ignored it. Each repetition got more urgent, more desperate, shriller. The confidence and strength my mind had lent to Imagine’s voice faded as I worked, leaving just a desperate, pitiable shriek, one I empathized with but could not cater to. It went from suggesting to demanding to pleading to begging as I followed the strands of The Forest in my mind, and as I located the single thread that would unravel the whole it became a clawing, maddening thing that wanted only to distract me from my task.

I realized abstractly, with my mind split between embracing Laura and sifting through the guts of her reality, that Imagine had not just used The Forest as a weapon, but as a desperate Hail Mary. This was, one way or another, the last battle of our war, and I could win it if I went through with my task.

My second pattern snagged my attention as I was ready to do to The Forest what I believed would destroy it. I obligingly pulled back, and relocated to The Room. The blue fire was roaring merrily, almost dangerously,

Are you sure this is the right course? Its toneless words sprung up immediately. Concern and uneasiness were implied.

“No.” I admitted, swiveling the stone chair to look into the fire. “I don’t want to destroy Imagine... Do you think this will?”

We sought only control over Imagine, it was the originator of this escalation. The voice pointed out. I do not think it will be destroyed, but it will be... subdued.

I agreed wordlessly. This would exhaust my subconscious, my overactive imagination, my suppressed desires, and give me at least a temporary peace. It was a shame it had to come at such a high price.

One world is a high price now?

“This world.” I replied simply. “This one... is different. Personal. Besides, one world is more than we have ever lost before.”

Yes, true. My second pattern did not elaborate, and subsided into silence, leaving me, for once in my life, completely alone with my thoughts.

I watched the brighter-than-usual fire for some time, then finally roused myself and returned to my work. That central thread of The Forest, already exposed by my probing, would only need to be pulled just right to cause the whole of the falsehood of the world to collapse upon itself. I would just need to pull, then go inside to let matters take their own course.

Imagine’s attempts at distraction renewed as soon as I emerged from The Room, but I ignored them, and let myself sink back partway into The Forest, just far enough that part of my mind felt Laura’s embrace, and my own arms around her. Just enough that the other part of my mind could see the consequences of what I was about to do.

I hesitated there for a long moment, then took a deep breath and pulled. Though nothing seemed to change, I could see that the damage was done, that The Forest would collapse. I should have felt amazement - this was something I’d never had need to try before - but I felt only a sick feeling, like I’d been hoping all along that it wouldn’t work.

Imagine’s projected clawing and shrieking stopped, as if the breath had been sucked from the lungs powering it. Rather than wait for this annoyance to return, I settled all the way down into the doomed Forest. “It’s done.” I told Laura quietly. “This world will collapse soon.” As if confirming my statement, there was another gust of wind, and it didn’t quite die all the way back down to stillness.

She seemed to wilt a little in my arms, but clung tighter. “Thank you, Matt.” She whispered.

“Don’t thank me.” My voice was heavy, and I tried to keep her from sensing how close to tears I really was. “I just killed you.” Another gust, this one left more residual wind, and the trees creaked alarmingly above us.

Story continues in part 4 (here).