Written: Saturday. June 6, 2020.
Amanda was back in the same loop of madness. She is lying in her bed, hearing something that wakes her up. Finds her computer still opened, and sees a strange novel that’s been written by anonymous writer. She keeps seeing this novel, and somehow each week that passes by, a new chapter is added. She reads it, but does not understand what it means. She doesn’t know whether it was her that wrote it — clearly caused by her all-nighters — or if it was someone else entirely. She leans more to the latter, but is only left more confused with the situation. Where was she? Why is everything happening similar to how it already happened the other day? And why is it that the only thing that changes is the mysterious novel that she can’t quite understand at all even if she’s read the words a million times?
She finds herself walking down the street to where her school gate is. It’s morning time, and she’s just about to get to class. She finds herself sitting on an armchair, holding the same pile of paper. It’s a tad heavier than before, now. There’d been a few sheets added on the back. Still the same as before. Just the title, never an author’s name.
How can this keep on happening to her? Who owns the voice trying to tell her to keep reading on? Questions, questions. But answers, she can never receive, no matter how hard she tried. I can’t keep living the same day over and over. I have to find a way out! She says to herself, with all the strength and determination running through her veins, she says that to herself, reminding her that this is not okay. That there’s something more to this. But what?
She asks. What if…what if I don’t read the goddamn thing?
“I apologize for having your friends mixed up in the breach, Tobias.” Lady Veergha said to her companion. They were walking down a road that seemed to go on forever, depending on how their conversation goes. “That version of me had no control of what was inside of us. Of me.”
“It was…” Toby started, trying to think of his next words. “I was surprised at first, to see that I was hugging her when I woke up after.” He tried not to meet her gaze, but Lady Veergha noticed that he had a look that seemed to linger. As if he was looking for something in her. Someone. “But I kind of knew that it was too good to be true.” Toby continued. “Besides, what I did to her — “
“What you did was noble, Terran Tobias.” Lady Veergha cut him off. Toby paused to look at her; his eyes held questions. Lady Veergha expected as much. “Regardless of whether or not your memories of her are authentic, I think it was a bold move to take her out of the equation as much as possible.”
Toby just stood there, looking at the floor. He thought of what she said to him, and inevitably nodded. “I won’t say it like that, but that’s very much what ended up happening anyway, so… besides, we’re facing a force larger than all of us. There’s no room for personal agendas.”
“You are starting to speak like I would in situations that leave you vulnerable.” Lady Veergha said. “Don’t.”
“You can’t deny that you think it too. I mean, look at you, you’re a leader. How many times has Veronnogh told you to suck it up and get your head in the game? There’s no time for you to spend time feeling things. That flower dude died because you somehow started caring for what happens to him, remember?”
The scene changed. They were on the flower planet again. Lady Veergha showed Toby the moment he had mentioned. He saw Veronnogh standing in the middle of a room filled with leaves and petals. No, it was made of leaves and petals. Of flowers that had colors he could only ever dream of. But the colors seemed to flicker and fade away as he noticed the figure shuffling inside of Veronnogh’s grasp. It was Darraihn.
“Why did you take us back here?” He asked Lady Veergha. “Why would you watch him get killed again?”
“Fool!” Lady Veergha barked at him. “Do you think that I never go back to this exact moment whenever I get the chance? How would you explain returning yourself to the same exact moment when your friends are about to get pummeled by the monster in your dreams?”
“I don’t — “
“How do you explain that whenever you return to that exact moment, you feel as though you want to change what happens, but it only remains the same way? Your friends get killed, the city burns,”
“I’m not the one putting myself back — “
“And you watch that girl get crushed over and over again. And you scream at the top of your lungs to make it all stop, but it doesn’t.”
“Stop it!”
Lady Veergha does exactly that. She stops. A smile on her face, but not a smile of mischief. A sad smile. A look of understanding. She looks back to the artificial moment they’re in. It’s been stopped in time, like a movie that’s been paused. “Still, even now, you cannot realize that your dreams do not control what happens.” She holds her hand up, as if turning an invisible switch, and the scene plays out.
Darraihn continues to be grappled by Veronnogh, but a sudden fast image tackles down Veronnogh to the ground. Darraihn is released, and sees that Lady Veergha, in her malformed state, has stabbed Veronnogh with a sharp edged arm made out of pure metal. Veronnogh is bleeding out, and is trying to morph his body into a dozen different variations, but then slowly fades out, revealing a scaled and lifeless body. Toby notices that it had reptilian features. It’s legs shifted into angled lines. It’s arms became smaller. Veronnogh’s lifeless head resembled that of a dinosaur.
“What is this?” Toby asked in disbelief. “How did you do that? Is this some alternate reality we’re seeing right now?”
“No, but I suppose one would desire it to be that way.” Lady Veergha answered him. “What I’ve showed you is the ability to manipulate your memories, your thoughts and dreams. You could do it to, but you choose not to.”
“Why wouldn’t I choose to save my friends, and defeat that monster?”
“Because in some unexplainable way, you feel as though that’s the fate that you deserve. We are much alike, you and I. Troubled by our memories, our past mistakes, our selfless choices.” Toby looked away, but Lady Veergha can hear him sobbing. She continued, “I cannot help but think that we arrived here… for a much bigger reason than we could have anticipated.”
Toby looked at her, his eyes had tears in them, but he quickly wiped them off. “What do you mean?”
“I believe that we were sent here, to join forces with one another.”
Drew found himself still falling. He’s been falling for a while. Time doesn’t really matter here, he realized. He somehow knew where he was. It was about time, too. He was in a dream. No — he was in a mind-breach. But the question in his mind was this: Why was he all alone in the mind-breach? Shouldn’t he have his friends with him, since they were also brought into the mind-breach? At least that’s what he thinks might’ve happened to them after that strong light appeared.
“What’s up, dude.” Drew heard from somewhere. It was Tom’s voice. He looked up, and saw Tom falling as well. They eventually reached the same height “You got thrown out by a girl, too?”
“Not exactly — wait what?”
“Nothing. That was random. What’s happening?”
“I dunno, man. I guess we’re just in it for the ride on this one.” Drew looked at his watch, and it seemed to have letters instead of numbers; and they weren’t Roman numerals. I thought as much. Time is irrelevant in the fifth dimension.
“How far do you think we are from land?” Tom asked him.
“We’ll probably be falling until either Toby or Lady Veergha wakes up.”
“Man, I thought I’d finally get a chance to spend time with the Lady this time.” Tom said. “Toby’s getting all of the attention. All I got from this fever dream was blue-balls.”
“What?”
“What? Nothing! This is a dream, my dude. Don’t judge! I didn’t make this up.”
“Well, I guess I’m not one to even do any judging either.”
“Why, what happened in yours?”
“We’re alone right now, right?” he and Tom looked around the endless abyss. Nothing. “I guess we could talk here. My dream sequence was about figuring out if June wanted some balloons on Valentine’s Day, or whatever. But when I was about to buy the balloons, everything was gone, and here we are.”
“You should definitely buy her some balloons. Women want the opposite of what they say. Trust me, I know.”
“Yeah, but you know… June might not really be that kind of girl.” Drew said.
“Bullshit!” Tom’s voice echoed in the nothingness. Makes no sense, cause if this was the same as outer space, sound couldn’t bounce off of anywhere. “That gets them every time, my dude.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. You know more than me when it comes to them, anyway.”
“For sure, man.” Tom raised both of his thumbs up. “Now how do we get out of here?”
“Maybe we could think our way out?” Drew said. “We know that this is a dream, right? That means we’re lucid dreaming.”
“Lucy-what?”
“It’s when you know you’re in a dream, so you can control what happens.”
“Not in my experience,” Tom said. “But, sure. Let’s try it…what exactly are we trying here?”
“We’re gonna try and go under another layer in this dream.”
“A dream within a dream?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“How do we do that?”
“By using this.” Drew took out a metal suit case out of nowhere. “Come on, glide towards me and stick this tube to your vein.”
“Where’d that thing come from?”
“I thought of it. I told you, we’re Inception-ing this place. So start counting sheep.”
Toby looked at the image of Veronnogh’s lifeless body. “Why’d he turn into a dino-humanoid when he died?”
“Volgans have a reptilian ancestry.” Lady Veergha replied to him.
“So this really is kind of like The Visitors.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. It’s probably a movie you wouldn’t enjoy watching… actually, we’re not too far off to the plot of tha — you know what, never mind. Forget I said anything. So, you guys have reptilian ancestry?”
“Not I.” Lady Veergha replied. “The Volgans are the ones that are reptilian-descent”
“But when we saw you two for the first time, you guys had almost the same features as lizards.”
“It is appropriate for us Volgan followers to walk in their image. But no, I am not originally a Volgan. I am a Korvellian.”
“Oh that’s right! You were abducted by them when you were young. That was the memory that I saw.”
“Yes… and I’ve seen you being bathed by your mother as well.”
“Wait, what?”
“Oh, I thought we were sharing things we saw while we were under the breach. My mistake.”
“How much do you know about my life?”
“Well, given that I’ve done this for quite longer than you have, I suppose I know about all there is to know.”
“Everything?”
“Every moment of every day. I know when you first graduated your primary years. I know the moment when you convinced to mingle with someone with both of your mouths in the dark, but you completely resisted that urge anyway. I know how many times you please yourse — “
“Okay! Enough! That’s enough of that. I don’t need you to narrate my whole life for me.” Dammit, I thought I had the edge on her on this one. “…why would you even look through those memories!”
Amanda was back in the same loop of madness. She is lying in her bed, hearing something that wakes her up. Finds her computer still opened, and sees a strange novel that’s been written by anonymous writer. She keeps seeing this novel, and somehow each week that passes by, a new chapter is added. She reads it, but does not understand what it means. She doesn’t know whether it was her that wrote it — clearly caused by her all-nighters — or if it was someone else entirely. She leans more to the latter, but is only left more confused with the situation. Where was she? Why is everything happening similar to how it already happened the other day? And why is it that the only thing that changes is the mysterious novel that she can’t quite understand at all even if she’s read the words a million times?
She finds herself walking down the street to where her school gate is. It’s morning time, and she’s just about to get to class. She finds herself sitting on an armchair, holding the same pile of paper. It’s a tad heavier than before, now. There’d been a few sheets added on the back. Still the same as before. Just the title, never an author’s name.
How can this keep on happening to her? Who owns the voice trying to tell her to keep reading on? Questions, questions. But answers, she can never receive, no matter how hard she tried. I can’t keep living the same day over and over. I have to find a way out! She says to herself, with all the strength and determination running through her veins, she says that to herself, reminding her that this is not okay. That there’s something more to this. But what?
She asks. What if…what if I don’t read the goddamn thing?
* * *
“I apologize for having your friends mixed up in the breach, Tobias.” Lady Veergha said to her companion. They were walking down a road that seemed to go on forever, depending on how their conversation goes. “That version of me had no control of what was inside of us. Of me.”
“It was…” Toby started, trying to think of his next words. “I was surprised at first, to see that I was hugging her when I woke up after.” He tried not to meet her gaze, but Lady Veergha noticed that he had a look that seemed to linger. As if he was looking for something in her. Someone. “But I kind of knew that it was too good to be true.” Toby continued. “Besides, what I did to her — “
“What you did was noble, Terran Tobias.” Lady Veergha cut him off. Toby paused to look at her; his eyes held questions. Lady Veergha expected as much. “Regardless of whether or not your memories of her are authentic, I think it was a bold move to take her out of the equation as much as possible.”
Toby just stood there, looking at the floor. He thought of what she said to him, and inevitably nodded. “I won’t say it like that, but that’s very much what ended up happening anyway, so… besides, we’re facing a force larger than all of us. There’s no room for personal agendas.”
“You are starting to speak like I would in situations that leave you vulnerable.” Lady Veergha said. “Don’t.”
“You can’t deny that you think it too. I mean, look at you, you’re a leader. How many times has Veronnogh told you to suck it up and get your head in the game? There’s no time for you to spend time feeling things. That flower dude died because you somehow started caring for what happens to him, remember?”
The scene changed. They were on the flower planet again. Lady Veergha showed Toby the moment he had mentioned. He saw Veronnogh standing in the middle of a room filled with leaves and petals. No, it was made of leaves and petals. Of flowers that had colors he could only ever dream of. But the colors seemed to flicker and fade away as he noticed the figure shuffling inside of Veronnogh’s grasp. It was Darraihn.
“Why did you take us back here?” He asked Lady Veergha. “Why would you watch him get killed again?”
“Fool!” Lady Veergha barked at him. “Do you think that I never go back to this exact moment whenever I get the chance? How would you explain returning yourself to the same exact moment when your friends are about to get pummeled by the monster in your dreams?”
“I don’t — “
“How do you explain that whenever you return to that exact moment, you feel as though you want to change what happens, but it only remains the same way? Your friends get killed, the city burns,”
“I’m not the one putting myself back — “
“And you watch that girl get crushed over and over again. And you scream at the top of your lungs to make it all stop, but it doesn’t.”
“Stop it!”
Lady Veergha does exactly that. She stops. A smile on her face, but not a smile of mischief. A sad smile. A look of understanding. She looks back to the artificial moment they’re in. It’s been stopped in time, like a movie that’s been paused. “Still, even now, you cannot realize that your dreams do not control what happens.” She holds her hand up, as if turning an invisible switch, and the scene plays out.
Darraihn continues to be grappled by Veronnogh, but a sudden fast image tackles down Veronnogh to the ground. Darraihn is released, and sees that Lady Veergha, in her malformed state, has stabbed Veronnogh with a sharp edged arm made out of pure metal. Veronnogh is bleeding out, and is trying to morph his body into a dozen different variations, but then slowly fades out, revealing a scaled and lifeless body. Toby notices that it had reptilian features. It’s legs shifted into angled lines. It’s arms became smaller. Veronnogh’s lifeless head resembled that of a dinosaur.
“What is this?” Toby asked in disbelief. “How did you do that? Is this some alternate reality we’re seeing right now?”
“No, but I suppose one would desire it to be that way.” Lady Veergha answered him. “What I’ve showed you is the ability to manipulate your memories, your thoughts and dreams. You could do it to, but you choose not to.”
“Why wouldn’t I choose to save my friends, and defeat that monster?”
“Because in some unexplainable way, you feel as though that’s the fate that you deserve. We are much alike, you and I. Troubled by our memories, our past mistakes, our selfless choices.” Toby looked away, but Lady Veergha can hear him sobbing. She continued, “I cannot help but think that we arrived here… for a much bigger reason than we could have anticipated.”
Toby looked at her, his eyes had tears in them, but he quickly wiped them off. “What do you mean?”
“I believe that we were sent here, to join forces with one another.”
* * *
Drew found himself still falling. He’s been falling for a while. Time doesn’t really matter here, he realized. He somehow knew where he was. It was about time, too. He was in a dream. No — he was in a mind-breach. But the question in his mind was this: Why was he all alone in the mind-breach? Shouldn’t he have his friends with him, since they were also brought into the mind-breach? At least that’s what he thinks might’ve happened to them after that strong light appeared.
“What’s up, dude.” Drew heard from somewhere. It was Tom’s voice. He looked up, and saw Tom falling as well. They eventually reached the same height “You got thrown out by a girl, too?”
“Not exactly — wait what?”
“Nothing. That was random. What’s happening?”
“I dunno, man. I guess we’re just in it for the ride on this one.” Drew looked at his watch, and it seemed to have letters instead of numbers; and they weren’t Roman numerals. I thought as much. Time is irrelevant in the fifth dimension.
“How far do you think we are from land?” Tom asked him.
“We’ll probably be falling until either Toby or Lady Veergha wakes up.”
“Man, I thought I’d finally get a chance to spend time with the Lady this time.” Tom said. “Toby’s getting all of the attention. All I got from this fever dream was blue-balls.”
“What?”
“What? Nothing! This is a dream, my dude. Don’t judge! I didn’t make this up.”
“Well, I guess I’m not one to even do any judging either.”
“Why, what happened in yours?”
“We’re alone right now, right?” he and Tom looked around the endless abyss. Nothing. “I guess we could talk here. My dream sequence was about figuring out if June wanted some balloons on Valentine’s Day, or whatever. But when I was about to buy the balloons, everything was gone, and here we are.”
“You should definitely buy her some balloons. Women want the opposite of what they say. Trust me, I know.”
“Yeah, but you know… June might not really be that kind of girl.” Drew said.
“Bullshit!” Tom’s voice echoed in the nothingness. Makes no sense, cause if this was the same as outer space, sound couldn’t bounce off of anywhere. “That gets them every time, my dude.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. You know more than me when it comes to them, anyway.”
“For sure, man.” Tom raised both of his thumbs up. “Now how do we get out of here?”
“Maybe we could think our way out?” Drew said. “We know that this is a dream, right? That means we’re lucid dreaming.”
“Lucy-what?”
“It’s when you know you’re in a dream, so you can control what happens.”
“Not in my experience,” Tom said. “But, sure. Let’s try it…what exactly are we trying here?”
“We’re gonna try and go under another layer in this dream.”
“A dream within a dream?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“How do we do that?”
“By using this.” Drew took out a metal suit case out of nowhere. “Come on, glide towards me and stick this tube to your vein.”
“Where’d that thing come from?”
“I thought of it. I told you, we’re Inception-ing this place. So start counting sheep.”
* * *
Toby looked at the image of Veronnogh’s lifeless body. “Why’d he turn into a dino-humanoid when he died?”
“Volgans have a reptilian ancestry.” Lady Veergha replied to him.
“So this really is kind of like The Visitors.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. It’s probably a movie you wouldn’t enjoy watching… actually, we’re not too far off to the plot of tha — you know what, never mind. Forget I said anything. So, you guys have reptilian ancestry?”
“Not I.” Lady Veergha replied. “The Volgans are the ones that are reptilian-descent”
“But when we saw you two for the first time, you guys had almost the same features as lizards.”
“It is appropriate for us Volgan followers to walk in their image. But no, I am not originally a Volgan. I am a Korvellian.”
“Oh that’s right! You were abducted by them when you were young. That was the memory that I saw.”
“Yes… and I’ve seen you being bathed by your mother as well.”
“Wait, what?”
“Oh, I thought we were sharing things we saw while we were under the breach. My mistake.”
“How much do you know about my life?”
“Well, given that I’ve done this for quite longer than you have, I suppose I know about all there is to know.”
“Everything?”
“Every moment of every day. I know when you first graduated your primary years. I know the moment when you convinced to mingle with someone with both of your mouths in the dark, but you completely resisted that urge anyway. I know how many times you please yourse — “
“Okay! Enough! That’s enough of that. I don’t need you to narrate my whole life for me.” Dammit, I thought I had the edge on her on this one. “…why would you even look through those memories!”
End of Chapter.
* * *
* * *
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