the arrival
sleepy. Oh, that's kind of neat, my words got broken up between the chapters. Oh no, why is this chapter titled this. Maybe James or one of them knows. I got up and found the three of them huddled around a table in the middle of the room drafting something. "Hey, um... did anyone else notice the name of this chapter?"
"...Huh. Y'know, afterward didn't actually use any chapter names, it was just chapter one, two, three, and so on. You know, its weird, we're on chapter seventeen of draftware at the moment. afterward was finally wrapping up the loose threads by now, we're not even at any sort of climax. Weird how that one works out."
"No, 'the arrival'? Whose arrival? Who is showing up?"
"Uh... huh. Yeah, not sure. There could be lots of different answers."
"We should probably go meet with Memmi. She wants this room preserved, so we can't damage this afterward... why not seal off the one below this one? Is there one?"
"There is, yeah. There's probably a dozen. We could do that, and that would solve her problem. Heh, maybe we could rip up the ceiling and make a sort of double-decker thing? But it is nice to be in this room, you can tell Tammy got a lot of use out of it."
James sat back on the dusty-but-otherwise-pristine couch. Flux was afraid to go anywhere, probably because she'd pick up all that dust and it'd just be a mess, and Scriff was dusting off Tammy's old furniture in the kitchen. The place felt a bit more lived-in, yeah, but unless she was only around for three days there's no way she actually used much if any of this stuff. It all seems so new, but so forgotten. I kind of felt a little sad. I mean, imagine being a dishwasher installed in a room that sits vacant, and then some girl shows up, and now you're all excited that you'll get to wash her dishes, but then she leaves and twenty years pass with no dishes to wash. Imagine being that bed, only getting three nights of sleep with your new tenant and then 7,302 nights of emptiness. Imagine being the table, nothing new being handed off to you in two decades after just a couple nights' worth of new things. It was tearing me up inside, all of these devices. If they could speak, what would they tell us? Would they just be glad to see a new human companion? Would they be upset we abandoned them for so long? Woul--
"YOᑌ ᔕEEᗰ ᔕTᖇEᔕᔕEᗪ. IT'ᔕ OkᗩY."
"flux... youre trying to help i get that but... um..."
i wasn't sleepy, but just like um... words felt heavy, i cant
"ᗯE'ᒪᒪ GET TᕼᖇOᑌGᕼ TᕼIᔕ TOGETᕼEᖇ. I'ᒪᒪ ᗷOOᔕT YOᑌ ᗷᗩᑕK ᑌᑭ, ᗷᑌT I ᑎEEᗪ TO KᑎOᗯ OᑎE TᕼIᑎG."
"yeah"
"ᗪO YOᑌ ᑭᖇOᗰIᔕE TO ᒍᑌᔕT ᖇEᒪᗩ᙭?"
"um"
"sure"
the little brain goblins gone to sleee good gosh that feels weird
...Alright, I'm back. I wish Flux would warn me when she's about to sap me of all of my energy. It's hard to move, it's hard to think, I'm kind of just a sleepy puddle when she does that, and I thought it was pretty clear I wasn't happy to be toyed with like this... I mean, I get why she did what she did, it's just... I... I dunno, it's a bit frustrating.
"So, um... were we going to tell Memmi about--"
"About what?" she said.
I'll never get how we end up doing this. Do I just black out until we get there, or...?
"Memmi," Richard said, "we think we have a plan for sealing away the Watchers without destroying Room 808. Couldn't we just seal away the previous afterward and everything below it? Keep this one, keep the one below it, seal away the rest?"
"We could," she said, "but before we talk sealing away afterwards, there is a... bit of a bigger problem."
"What's the problem?" Simon said.
Memmi walked off into another room, and came back. I was following her. It wasn't me, though, but it was me. Tall, black, minty green sweater, black skirt, red shoes... that was what I woke up on the beach. "Oh, hi!" she said, reaching out to shake my hand.
"Um..."
I looked over at Memmi, who sighed and slowly retreated to another room. I turned back and looked at everyone else. They were beyond stunned. I turned back towards me and shook my hand, her hand, however this works. "What's your name?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Oh, um... I'm not too sure, actually! See, I woke up on the beach not remembering anything except this little song, how'd it go..."
"You don't need to tell me that. Do you have an ID card?"
"Oh, yeah, let me..."
I—she, she... she took out a plastic card. "Emmerson Suzy". I miserably handed it back. "So what's your name?" She asked.
"...Suzy Emmerson..."
"Hey, our names are the same backwards!"610Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjnZ6qp28bb
"They're... they're not, sorry."
She giggled. I did have a cute laugh, I guess. "Not like that! Take your two names and swap them around and you get my two names!"
"Yeah, I'll give you that. Um, Memmi--"
"You've met her, too? She's a bit of a silly old witch, wouldn't you agree?"
"Memmi, please--"
"So how long have you been here? It's so nice to meet someone just like me!"
"...Richard, should I tell her?" I asked.
"I dunno, I have no idea what's even going on."
I cleared my throat and put a hand on her (my?) shoulder. "Emmi... I'm just like you because I am you."
"What are you talking about?"
"Your story is just that, a story. They called it draftware, and--"
"Well, why'd they call it that?"
"Because you can't remember anything else, you have no other backstory, you're a draft of a more proper character... but I'm you seventeen chapters later."
"Chapters? Like in a book?"
"Yes, exactly."
I could see it in her eyes, I could feel what she was feeling. She looked a little lost, upset, heartbroken at the whole thing. "I... I'm just a..."
"No, no, it's okay. You might just exist in a story, but characters in stories can grow, can change, can get older, they can be just like any other person."
"But... but they're not real..."
"That's..."
This was making me sad, consoling a sad, lost, upset version of me. She was starting to tear up. I couldn't help myself, but I had to. I leaned in and hugged her. "Just... it'll be alright... I get you don't know how you got here, I totally understand that. We need to talk with Memmi about what you're doing here, what we can do for you."
She quietly nodded her head and then sunk into my shoulder. "Come on, how about we sit on the couch?"
We both sat down, and Memmi stepped back into the room with an ornate glass bottle. "Now then..." she began with no continuation.
"Why is there a second me?" I asked.
"...Not sure. The Watchers, maybe. Perhaps they're trying to rewrite how you got here to undo everything you know about them? I'm just making a guess."
"They could be writing a second draft of their copy," James said.
"It could just be something that was meant to happen," Simon said.
"There's a lot of things it could be, but we need a concrete answer. Especially now, 30,000 words in, nobody wants to re-read the first couple chapters through a new character."
The other me (to heck with it, I'm calling her Emmi like how everyone called me before) painfully shut her eyes. "I think she's still not used to this," I said.
"Probably," Memmi said.
She took a drink from her bottle, set it down on a table, and approached Emmi. "Excuse me, Miss Emmerson, would you like to meet some new friends?" She asked.
"Um... sure..." Emmi replied, wiping tears from her eyes and re-adjusting her glasses.
"You three," she said, pointing at Craggy, Scriff, and Flux.
"We're making friends with another Emmi!" Scriff exclaimed.
Craggy stepped up to Emmi, lowered herself to be eye-to-eye with the girl, and carefully held out an open hand. Emmi grabbed Craggy's hand the best she could, and the two headed for the door, Flux and Scriff following her.
"I wonder what sorts of fun little adventures they'll go on," I said.
"Who knows, honestly," Memmi replied, taking another drink, "anyways... you four mentioned sealing off afterward an afterward lower... that could work... the challenge becomes doing so safely as to preserve the next lowest."
"Is there anything important in those? Some place that belonged to someone important like Tammy?"
"Every other afterward more or less belonged to a man by the name of Linus Linoleum. A bit of a tyrant, glad to be rid of him. And I'm not sure who else is left from that afterward..."
"Are the tunnels the only access points between afterwards?"
"Yes, they are now."
"Well, aside from the water pipes," James said.
"True, true..."
"Maybe completely blocking off their access is going to be too difficult," I said.
"That might be the case, it seems... we'll have to weigh our options. As quick as we can, though, we don't know when the Watchers could arrive."
"Especially with Amark active again," Richard said.
Memmi paused and looked at him, giving him the most intense glare I've ever seen. "Amark is...?"
"Yeah, he found our lab and completely trashed the place, and I think he might be out and about. And his appearance might herald the arrival of Rakonto and the Watchers."
"We have to act fast, and we need to find him. Are the other three still outside with Miss Emmerson's doppelganger?"
"Let me go check," James said, stepping out.
"...So where did she even come from?" I asked.
"The other you? Found her on the beach this morning, someone sent her this way to speak with Bit, but unfortunately... nonetheless, she arrived at my door just half an hour ago. For a moment, I had thought you had lost your memory again."
"No, that's not the case. Strange, though, that a second me shows up like that!"
"Very strange."
"No," James said.
"No?"
"They're not out here. I don't know where they are. One of them had a cell phone, right?"
"I believe so," Memmi replied.
"Do you have a phone number?"
"Give me a moment..."
Memmi stepped into another room and James followed, and I was left wondering what was even happening. This is insane even by afterward standards.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
