burned into the past
I don't even know what to say. There was an afterward underneath the afterward. Just consider what that means from a logistic standpoint: they built a whole new weird world on top of the last one. How would you even go about doing that? Why would you do that? Maybe Richard, Simon, and James could clear it up, I rationalized to myself. But how would I get down to a lower afterward?
"You have two options."
"Oh, Memmi! How convenient!"
"Eh, just showing up like this as needed helps the pacing. It's a bit jarring, but it saves us some words. Words that we then spent doing this whole bit where I explain the—right. You want to know how to access a lower afterward. There are two options. The metatrain, a train you must will into existence, but I do not believe you are capable enough to make it so, or you can follow the train tracks. The trains no longer run to lower afterwards, but you could always make your way down there yourselves."
"That sounds a bit dangerous!"
"There should be narrow walkways along the sides of the tracks. If there's not, then that's poor planning on the author's part and poor visualization skills on the reader's part."
"Well, alright. I hope they have some answers for me. Wait, didn't you take one of the Retconologists out of where they were and bring them here? Couldn't you do the same and send me to them?"
"Straining her powers is how Bit ceased to exist. Without a Nephim the Watchers will surely turn this into their story, you'll be a shadow of a memory. I am willing to sacrifice myself to them if the need arises, but I'd rather keep as much of my facilities as possible."
"Wait... Memmi, are you--"
"--The last Nephim in the afterward? I am now."
"How many of you were there?"
"This time twenty years ago, just three. Fifteen years ago, that number reached ten. Five years ago, it was twenty. It's down to one."
"And how do more appear?"
"The same way Lizi, afters, and even you arrived here: they simply show up."
"...So, the lower afterward--"
"Head to the train station and follow the tracks down. You'll know you're there."
"Well, alright Memmi, thanks for your help."
"Um... Emmi... why are you talking to a wall?"
"Whuh?"
We were at the train station. I'll never understand why we just don't do a regular transition. I spotted the walkway, but my first worry was Craggy. She's big, and I was afraid she'd get clipped by a train as we ventured into the tunnel. We really didn't have much of a plan, but I didn't just want to send her home. We might need a bit of protection down there. Who knows what weird people make their home in an underground abandoned city?
"Ｉ ｃｏｕｌｄ ｊｕｓｔ ｓｔｏｐ ｔｈｅ ｔｒａｉｎ."
"That sounds a bit dangerous, maybe illegal."
"Ｎａｍｅ ｏｕｒ ｏｔｈｅｒ ｃｈｏｉｃｅｓ."
"...Craggy, I... fine. Just be careful, alright?"
She nodded, and we slipped into the tunnel. Hopefully nobody is calling security on us. It was a bit more narrow than I thought it would be, and I was carefully, ever-so-carefully making steady progress down the path, Flux, Scriff, and Craggy behind me. I spotted a fork in the tunnel, one side delving deeper downwards, and knew we were on the right track, but my train of thought was suddenly disrupted by a loud horn.
A train was stopped, and a maroon after, a sort of puppety-looking fellow was pulling the cord to sound the horn. "Come on!" he shouted.
Craggy huffed, and slid up against the train, pulling the door open. "Craggy!" Scriff shouted, chasing after her friend.
"Scriff!" Flux exclaimed.
"Really?" I replied.
I boarded the train, and immediately noticed that the conductor's room door was open, and inside the after had pressed himself up against the glass. "Ｙｏｕ ｃａｎ ｈａｖｅ ｔｈｉｓ ｔｒａｉｎ ｂａｃｋ ｗｈｅｎ ｗｅ'ｒｅ ｄｏｎｅ ｕｓｉｎｇ ｉｔ. Ａｒｅ ｔｈｅｒｅ ａｎｙ ｏｔｈｅｒ ｐａｓｓｅｎｇｅｒｓ?"
"N...no..."
The guy seemed really nervous. I would be too if a giant lizard twice my height was hunched over me.
"Ｈａｖｅ ａ ｓｅａｔ."
"O...okay..."
He ducked past Craggy and holed himself up in a seat near the front. Craggy leaned over the control panel and carefully nudged a lever, and the train started rolling along the tracks. A press of a button, and the rails ahead shifted, and the train began to dive into the lower afterward, moving slow as ever.
At last, we could see a light at the end of the tunnel. Craggy slowed the train down even more and carefully pulled into the stop. "Ｓｏｒｒｙ ｆｏｒ ｔｈｅ ｄｅｌａｙ," she said, pushing herself through the door.
Had we made a mistake? This looked like the usual train station, just dustier. Some of the posters on the wall had become faded, but nothing was really in any disarray. It was kind of eerie. We ventured out onto the street, and found everything... exactly the same, just vacant and a little worn. It was darker than night down here, the glow of the lamps illuminating things just enough to see. We were headed to room 808 at the Green Tower, why such a specific place? We passed a handful of old shops and buildings, and eventually found the building. I pushed open the door and was hit with a worrying sense of stillness.
"Hello? Anyone?" I called at the desk.
"Um..."
"Well there still might be someone! Who's paying for all these lights?"
I didn't think there'd be anyone, but I was still hopeful. I was still really hopeful. I sighed and headed for the elevator. I mean, I thought it was the elevator. It was a sort of chair lift thing. "I guess it's only one person at a time. Who designs a device like this?"
We headed for the 8th floor, one at a time, and then from there found room 808. I didn't know what I expected when I opened the door. I sighed, reached for the door knob, and carefully pushed the door open.
The apartment was kind of nice, actually. A bit more spacious than the one I lived in, a bit more lived-in, too. Little reflective packets, both full and half-empty, lined the table, a couple empty bags here and there, and a discarded, worn coupon I couldn't read anymore. "Why here, though?" I asked.
"You know why," Richard said from another room, trying to sound ominous but ultimately failing because I recognized it was him.
He and the other two Retconologists stepped out into the main room carrying a stack of papers. "This was the apartment of Tammy Wilson. She was a lot like you, in some ways. You both woke up on the beach as amnesiacs and are currently involved in a major turning point for the afterward, but I would argue we have it harder than she does. She stumbled into problems and worked to solve them, we were thrown into ours."
"So why are we here?" I asked.
"Themeing!" Simon said, "also I'm not sure if you've seen our office, it's, uh..."
"Amark is active," James replied.
"Amark is watching," I said back.
"So you've seen his message!"
"Hard not to see it when its plastered all over."
"That's fair. This is worrying because Amark came here years back, and to our knowledge the Watchers sent an agent up to the surface and had them... for lack of a better term, they had Amark destroyed. He's not supposed to exist, but yet..."
"So what does this mean?" Scriff said.
"It's simple! Er, not really, it could mean a lot, we're still not sure just yet, but signs point to the Watchers having all of Amark's memories buried even farther back in his brain, and they've since sent him a message to come back online. That would mean that the Watchers are already commuting to the surface to begin overthrowing the afterward."
"That's..."
"Rough, yes, we're aware. They've blocked off the tracks in the lowest afterward, but crude x-rays of the afterward reveal there is a fracture between the lowest afterward and the next one above it. They'd need to climb up there, follow the rails back to the train yard, get a train going, and they're on their way."
"What about the water pipes?" I asked.
"They could process the bulk of the Watchers, sure, but they need to ensure that at least Rakonto survives the trip to the surface totally unharmed. If they have trains big enough to fit the entire crew, then they don't even need to worry about that. The pipes create sleeper agents who need to be activated, but why bother with that when you can pack an army a thousand people across and get them to their destination unharmed?"
"Well then can we block off the tracks?"
"We don't know what their plan even is, is the problem," Simon said, "but we did pitch that idea to Memmi, sealing off everything from this afterward down, just leaving the top. She's worried that might leave behind Tammy's legacy, she doesn't want to hurt any of this."
"I could see why," I said.
I couldn't, though. This was just an apartment. A bit roomy, yeah, and comfortably cool, the carpet was comfortable even if it was really dusty, but I had no idea exactly why people looked up to Tammy as much as they did. Friends and enemies alike have said her name around me, compared me to her, and I just don't get it, sorry.
"Actually... what was Tammy's deal, anyways? Why was she so important?" I asked.
"...Who wants to give this talk?" Richard said, "Should... should I give this t—alright, anyways... Tammy Wilson was the protagonist of afterward, right? That was not the first story our author has published."
"By my count, it's his third completed story on the Internet over the course of 7 years," Simon said.
"...Right, but it was his first story that told the tales of the afterward. We've been ripped out of that world for decades, the Nexus tore the afterward off of the earth, out of reality, and we've only existed as thoughts, ideas, fantasies, and our world had always felt... unstable. One day the afterward might be a game idea, the next its the shapings of a screenplay. An animated film, a live-action one, a book... and that's when it hits. afterward becomes a book. A couple hundred words and a few characters, a couple thousand, and story arcs arrive and get resolved, characters grow and learn, and in the end of it all its a story. People from reality, actual grounded reality read our story! And then it sticks with them, they think about how that world works, they might even write their own afterward, too, and that starts building the threads to connect the afterward to reality, which will help sort out getting people back home to where they belong. Tammy was the start of all of this. She's the first character you get introduced to in afterward. She's important, and..."
Man, this story was going on and on! It's practically its own book! This story was starting to wear me out, truth be told, I was kind of starting to drift off, and the moment I could hear it ringing in my head, that beep boop boop beep, I knew it was over."
"Suzy!" James exclaimed, and a tap startled me alert.
"Oh, uh..."
"Was I rambling?" Richard said, "Sorry about that. Um, but did you catch that?"
"Yeah, I think I did. And that's also why the Watchers are as dangerous as they are, they alter that story which alters this world?"
"In a way, yeah, that's what's happening."
"Huh, I see," I yawned.
"You've got to be tired, dealing with all this stress," Richard said earnestly.
"Um... yeah, I guess. It's just been--"
"A long... day, week... it's been rough, I totally get that. We've cleaned all of the bedding in this apartment, if you wanted to take a nap. It's a really comfortable bed. Tammy must have slept well."
"A quick nap, maybe some food, that'd be nice."
"Great. Um, unfortunately the only food we have here are the ration packets, and the only ones left around the apartment are the pink stuff, which just messes you up completely. I'd recommend having one of these and then heading to bed, not the other way around."
"Alright."
"You three need anything to eat?"
"I think we're good, we're just getting back from experiences, actually," Scriff said.
"Oh, did I ruin a lunch date?"
"It wasn't a date."
"It's a turn of... nevermind. Anyways, here's a clean packet, the bed's just down this way."
It was weird to think I was in Tammy's old bed. Weird to think that twenty years ago that sweet little adventure happened here, and now its gone bad and it's ended up in the same place. A little on-the-nose, author. I tore open the top of the packet and started trying to eat that foamy paste stuff inside. This stuff tasted weird, like that fluffy sugar candy stuff, I don't remember the name for it at the moment. It was really sweet, strangely familiar. They weren't kidding about the bed, though, this is super comfy. A bit too comfy, maybe, it was making me kind of
ns 15.158.61.21da2
