After all that searching, you're standing in the room shown to you by the cold spirit.
The disks that were glowing.. aren't. In real life they're faintly blue and faintly white.. like slices of melon or tomato, all coated in the dust of ages.
You try to brush one off. The dust remains, stuck so hard to the disk it might as well be varnish. You pick up a few and stack them on the ancient desk, trying to see how many of them they are, how thick they are, etcetera.. they look interesting, and they're obviously important, but you have very little idea what you are looking at.
Oh, these two are stuck together.. and.. pop!
That reveals a fresh surface, much more intensely coloured, blue and white.. You reach out to test if it's still sticky.
You're in darkness, swimming inside your head again, in peaceful emptiness.. like when you were inside your statue, and nothing in the world bothered you or could harm you.
No, not quite. It's like when you try to remember that age of your life, which seems so long ago. Only a few memories, only vagueness.. but this time you don't feel alone; there's someone else.
You reach out with your thoughts, try to ask a few questions. "Who are you? What's going on? What happened?"
No response comes--at least no response in words. Instead, everything shifts to redness, and you feel.. pain. Great pain. This is not something that whoever else is in here wants to remember, or will remember for you. Instead, you get faces.
A group of young people, most a year or two older than yourself. There's Chuck, round-faced, happy, always quick with a jape and the first to brighten things up. There's Case, who was always rough and hard, but wouldn't let anyone badmouth his friends. There's Soric, who was the brave one, always the one to take the toughest job. There's Doc, who was a few years older, and always the man with an idea.
..and another person, a woman. All you get about this one is her name, Goldie.
There's fear, hate, despair, disgust, more fear.. a whirlwind of intense emotions. And the redness fades.
It's much later. You're in a jungle, with thick trees all about, manning a riverboat. It's a houseboat, actually, and you spend your days going up and down the river, carrying this and that, talking to people.. it's a life. Not a great one, but what do you deserve?
Then a desert. This time, you're a prospector, looking at the beaches for diamonds. All alone..
Then a teacher, in a place like this one. A few students. Less loneliness, some happiness, some excitement, some recognition..
..but it's only a salve. Below it there is always fear; a deep fear, not a thing that shall grant you peace. Not in a career, not in love..
There's a few more memories. You're getting older, but there are many lives, many careers, almost too many for a normal person. At the end, there is a house by the sea, and two emotions.. fear.. and loneliness. One day the loneliness gets to be too much, and overwhelms the fear.
In the final memories you are on another island. Not the one you're exploring now, but a different one. It's barren.. there are no trees, there is no grass.. nothing but cold, bare, volcanic rock. There are two people waiting for you.. a scribe, and a soldier with a water wand.
You proceed to the middle of the island, where there is a large, carved obelisk. On it are a thousand lines, and you can't understand them, they are only squiggles and meaningless symbols to you. Your eyes look around the pillar desperately, hungrily.. and eventually they find what they must have been looking for, one line. One name.
Goldie's.
The last thing you remember is repeating her name to yourself.
Chapter 6 complete!
Author
Topic: Extinction (Read 225234 times)