Monday, October 22, 2012

halfway+2

2011 NANO Part 12   

    Wilson looks at Jerimia’s smoking stump, “You want me to stick around for a bit?  I don’t feel like going back to my home yet and there are some things I want to look into while I am here.”
    Jerimia waves his hand dismissively, “I don’t particularly care either way.  Rebecca will be staying here too.  Something about her being worried about her house because of something stupid or whatnot.  I wasn’t really listening when she explained it to me.  I just said yes because it makes my life easier.” 
    Wilson walks off to go presure his own various goals.  It isn’t so much that he doesn’t trust Jerimia.  In fact he trusts him explicitly.  Jerimia might run off on some half assed scheme and if they don’t stop them then he will end up genociding all the sharks or something like that.  But that is just Jerimia.  It is part of who he is and what he does.  He isn’t off trying to run/end the world when they don’t pay atension or something like that which is something that can’t be said for everyone else, Wilson included.  Also whenever a call goes out Jerimia has never failed to be there.  He may not be the first on the scene and he may not be the most effective person once he is there but at the very least he always shows up, regardless of what else he is doing.  That is nice.  Part of Wilson suspects that he is lonely.  The rest of Wilson knows that Jerimia just plain old likes battle.  They all enjoy a decent punch up that isn’t the thing.  Jerimia just seems to have actual honest to god legitimate fun while he is doing it unlike say Wilson who often times gets morose after an extended amount of physical combat.  The Jungle and all that.
    Wandering the halls of Jerimia’s underground compound he quickly gets lost.  It doesn’t particularly matter he can grab a robot or something like that and it will guide him to where he needs to go.  Right now he just wants to clear his head.  The cold metal walls of Jermia’s various bases are comforting in their own way.  For years after he was expelled from the jungle he wandered the plains, and woods before John found him.  His first time in a city after the jungle gave Wilson a panic attack.  It is nice to be better now.  Now the enclosed metal spaces, with its led lights, the gentle humming of machinery, and the clanking of various robots moving through the hallways comforts him.  It is almost like it shuts down his lower instinctual self allowing him to contemplate more.  Granted this cuts him off from the great snake but there are times where his isn’t entirely uncomfortable with that.  The snake didn’t come when it was supposed to but at the same time he retains all of his abilities, and he still gets vibrations, except now.  Now they suddenly stoped.  There are two explanations for that.  One is that something massively powerful stopped the vibrations dead in their tracks or, less optimally, he’d lost it.  He suspected it would happen eventually.  The great snake is many things but it is the epitome of cold blooded.  It doesn’t know love, fear, or compassion.  It flows through the stuff between universes eating whatever it is it chooses to feed off of.  It doesn’t have any know pretators not even a human with a gardening hoe.  Taking his sacrificial blade from the sachel at his side he looks at the blade, its material is nothing of this world.  Jerimia, Jared, or Alexander couldn’t identify it and Deven just didn’t like looking at it.  He believed that it is fashioned out of the scales of the great snake that got cast off at some point and some enterprising preists turned it into a dagger.  The source of his power.  It is that which draws the great snakes unfathomable attention. 
    There is something going on.  Something terrible.  It doesn’t matter if it is him loosing the atension of the great snake or if there is something external.  Sitting idely isn’t something that Wilson is used to doing.  Waiting for the hammer to fall is something that Wilson has never done.  He is the hammer.  He strikes his enemies like lightning and leaves nothing but tears and ashes in his wake.  Then he drinks the tears before disappearing back into the shadows again.  This isn’t the time for sitting around this is the time for action.  Of course action is something that will be useless unless it is carefully directed.  He needs a way to figure out his own things without drawing to much attention..  He needs to preform a ritual.  Not here.  Not underneath the steel sky with its artificial sun in wherever the hell it is that Jerimia builds his bases.  No,.  It needs to be in the jungle.  In the sun with the bugs the humidity and the heat.  It needs to be outside where the wind blows and the rain can penatrate your skin.  Where you can scream with no one hearing, where there is the empty ancient primal magics still left in the world.  Where you can break through and see the underside of things.  This needs to happen.  This needs to happen so he can know weather or not he is just a normal or if there is something truly terrible going on in this world.  Something that he should be responciple for, not reacting to.  This world is the great snakes weather it knows it or not and Wilson isn’t about to stand idly by and let some upstart deny it.  He may of failed but there will be other oppertnities, centuries for now to be certain.  Long after Wilson is dead and gone, his spirit departed and possibly devoured by whatever it is that is out there waiting for him, the snake will turn again and claim its prize.  He will see to it.  But first.  First he needs to know where he stands in the great scheme of things.  Is he still a man who can shake the world upending all that we know?  Or is he just a square john.  A normal.  Someone who can only look impotently around at the world, flailing helplessly hoping to god that he can cause some sort of identifiable change before being wiped off of the face of the earth by someone who has the ability to do so.
    The clicking of Wilson’s shoes leave echoes down the hallway as he quickens his pace.  Walking the long hallways that seem to streach on to nowhere he wonders idely what drives Jerimia to build all of this.  Buildings always seemed counterproductive to Wilson even before the jungle.  There was always a part of him that belonged there which is why when he stepped off that fateful plane years ago it felt like home.  He knows Jerimia can get him there.  He can do it in a blink of an eye.  The trick is to find a safe way to do it.  Jerimia loves his experimentation to much not to risk a friend.  He is about to grab a robot and have him lead him to the last known stable teleportation bay when he rounds a corner suddenly and collides with Rebecca.  Wilson, so deep in thought hadn’t heard her coming.  From the looks of her he hadn’t heard her calling out for help or her deep panic breathing.  He hadn’t smelled her fear.  Then again taking a second look at her, the fect that he didn’t smell her fear isn’t all that surprising.  She smiles more than a little relieved, “Jesus Wilson you startled me.  I seem to have made a wrong turn somewhere and these halls seem to go on forever”
    “Sorry, I was deep in thought, a million miles away.  I come here sometimes to clear my head and think about things.  I like how I can get lost here.  All these little robots everywhere have voice commands in them all you need to do is ask one and they will bring you back to where you need to be”
    She bits her lower lip and somewhat embarrassed, “I tried that, they don’t seem to recognize me”
    “Well looks like Jerimia forgot to do that.  Sorry.  There doesn’t seem to be any of them near by so we’ll walk a bit and eventually we’ll come across one that will lead us back to where we belong.  Come on now.  It won’t be long the damn things are everywhere.”
    She comes along.  They walk in scilence for a bit.  He can tell she wants to ask him something and he decides to wait until she figures out how.  Pacients is one of those things that seems to be lost in the modern world.  Eventualy she both finds the nerve and the words to ask, “What were you thinking about?”
    Such a simple sentence.  One would think it wouldn’t take that long to formulate.  He noted that she asks it in such a way to appear completely innocent while still trying to find out if he has any plans that might lead them all astray, “Rebecca despite all out time together in the group we don’t know each other very well.”  She nods slowly, “It happens with all the new commers you know.  Being a part of a group isn’t something we are used to.  We are used to leading groups.  To having people who would kill, maim, and die for us.  To be part of a group where no one will do that for you is weird isn’t it?”
    “Yes it is.  I miss it sometimes you know?”
    “I do.  My cult was my family.  I took care of them and they me.  I’ve never felt more at home with them than anywhere else in the world.  When I failed to draw the great snake to this world to have it devour us all I thought it would be all over for me.  I’d forgotten how to live in city, to wear these cloths, to work a job.  I was my religion and it was me and I didn’t know how I could possibly go back to the way things were.  Yet as I relearned language and all the things in my life that are a part of the modern world I still kept everything that is truly a part of me.  Do you understand?”
    She nods.
    “No no.  More than that.  What I am, me, the snake, everything I tried and failed to do I can’t just sit back.  I need to make sure that I am still who I am”
    “You mean you need to see if you are the high priest of the great snake?” They’s stopped walking now.  Her facing him she looks into his eyes with a fierce unreadable intensity.
    “Exactly”
    “Why”
    “The vibrations from the snake stopped.  It stopped mid vibration.  Which is, to the best of my knowledge impossible.  Whenever I received vibrations before they would gradually weaken as I started to destroy the problem.  The would never just stop dead even if I removed the problem right away”
    “So either something is blocking your vibrations or you are cut off from them.  Is that what you are saying?”
    Wilson nods, “So either the world is in terrible danger, or I am no longer a terrible danger to the world and I need to know which is which and to do that I need to go off the farm.  I need to become me again, the old me, the real me.  Not the me that I have fabricated for myself and everyone else out of lies and dust.  I need to be me I need to go back to the jungle”
    She narrows her eyes scrutinizing him carefully, “How big is this going to be?”
    He thinks for a moment, “I need to make sure that I am still on the inside but I won’t be sinking continents or destroying cities or anything like that.”
    Her eyes meet his again and he can almost feel them grinding his soul down looking for information or something close to it.  He could feel it.  The gaze of eons.  It is the sort of thing you feel when you are staring down a star thing because Stephen did something stupid, or when one of Alexander’s exparaments goes to far, or just once, when deep in the jungle, he found a space between the everythings and the nothing.  It was deep in a cave.  The sort of cave people make extremely bad horror movies about.  It is there that Wilson once started into the maw of nothing until something looked back at him.  It sends shivers down his spine and blood vacates his mind and swooshes down below his waist.  The whole world shrinks, it is reduced to just her and her alone.  Her and her damnedable eyes that locks him in place making him feel like a little boy who has just been caught playing with himself by the incarnation of god.  A few moments that pass in agony.  Moments that feel as if they are taking a left and turn towards eternity she finally say, “Alright then.  How can I help?”
    Just like that Wilson is free, all of himself is back in his control.  The way Rebecca describes how she was going to assume control of everyththing never made sense to Wilson.  Everyone else seemed to get it, especially Jared and Devon, both men of the world.  Well of sorts.  However, Wilson was in the jungle the whole time.  Now though now it makes sense.  It wasn’t any absurde schemes or plans.  It was just her.  She could of done it all by herself.  All she needs to do is to look at enough people at the same time, and then just like that they are her’s.  The scope of it all is terrifying.  And to think she wants to be on his side.  He breaks out in a laugh and lets out a wild whoop for joy, “Rebecca with you by my side I know I could of gotten the great snake’s attension for sure.  It is to bad you had your own plans that kept you far away from my sacrificial altar.  I need nothing from you don’t worry.  Not your blood, or your still beating heart, I do not need to eat your brains by the full moon light, or to strip you naked cover you in animal blood and to have my way with you until dawn.  Though we can do that last one if you’d like.  It remains a favorite ritual of mine even if it serves no particular purpose.  No no!  Just your company will do if you’d like.  Though I warn you we are going into the jungle.  And not just any jungle.  No we are going into the original heart of darkness, to the very platonic ideal of what the jungle is.  To the place where there is a cave that we can’t enter due to a flaming sword, where the animals roam and devour one another.  To the place where everything is weakest.  To the place where we prepared for the great snake’s arrival.  It is not a comfortable place to go, and I can’t gauntee that you will have a good time but it would be nice to have some company!”
    Rebecca smiles, “I once prepared to shake the world.  I’m not made of spun glass Mr. Wilson.  I’ll come with you on your insane jungle trek.  Also, I wouldn’t worry to much about me having a bad time.  If things get to rough we can just do the animal blood thing.  At the very least we will have something interesting to talk about in group next week”
    Wilson laughs again.  She realizes she loves his laugh.  He doesn’t do it with any degree of frequency.  More often than not he looks morose.  Staring off, like he is somewhere else or at the very least he wishes he was, “How true now lets vacate this bit bad mechanical death trap.  I know Jerimia has a working teleported somewhere around here”
    “Is it safe to use anything he built”
    With a smile on his lips, fire in his eyes he looks back at her and smiles once again, “Nope.”

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