Chapter 11
Chiara landed, feet down on the ground. Return to normal space-time had been uneventful, as easy as stepping off a step. She arrived in the wilderness. A man whistled. She turned to see a man and a woman apprising her.
“Aren’t you just a gumdrop from heaven…” The man who spoke this collapsed.
“Forgive him,” Bambi said. “He’s still isn’t socialized.”
If Chiara had a reaction about the unconscious man, she didn’t give it away. The shiny part of her suits hinted at rainbows in the direct sunlight. The hose she wore had a sheen of their own. She looked like she didn’t belong. As if she were cut out from a film frame and inserted into this reality. It was as if the light that fell on her was off, though her shadow was mostly right.
“I am Bambi,” Bambi said. “You’re not from here.”
“Neither are you,” Chiara said.
Bambi considered, her eye exploring the sky. “It depends on what you mean by here, I suppose. I didn’t originate on this planet. ‘Three ways to play.’ Soul paths allow for birth, spacetime travel, or dimensional travel. I am here legally. I was summoned from the void.”
“Your simulacra body is beyond the surface dweller’s capabilities,” Chiara said. “I doubt you were summoned from the void.”
Bambi nodded. She drew closer, not threatening, just apprising her with a lustful eye.
“You’re from the moon, aren’t you? You wear tech. You carry one of our kind. May I?” Bambi reached out tentatively. Chiara nodded, subtly, almost not perceptible. Bambi touched her, placing a hand over her heart, touching breast. Bambi met Chiara’s gaze, amused. “Why would you chose someone who is presently corporeal? You could have anyone. You could create your own. And yet…” Bambi’s eyes narrowed. “He’s a clone. I have the divergence date.”
“You are less forthcoming,” Chiara said.
Bambi withdrew her hand. “Sorry,” she said. “I have not mastered this body yet. Some things are easier than others. Likely due to expected performance design. They have access to a three-D printer. They have learned a way to align the android form with a discarnate soul. There were lots of souls who wanted at this man, but I was chosen because it was decided I would be fair. I was the best choice for his rehabilitation.”
Bambi looked at the man. She sighed.
“I am not confident for his recovery in this life time,” Bambi said. “He is a young soul, as feral as a cat. But sharp. He is hyper focused on developing intellect and physical strength.”
“You judge?” Chiara asked.
“Uh?” Bambi asked. “Oh, no. No. We’re the jury.”
Tristan roused, and started to get up. He looked to Chiara.
“Help me. I am being tortured…”
“I cannot interfere in your affairs,” Chiara said.
Tristan frowned, muttering bitch as he started to get up, and slept again. Bambi smiled at Chiara.
“This part is fun,” Bambi said.
Chiara frowned. “Forgive me, I cannot stay with you.”
“You should be here alone. Allow us to walk with you,” Bambi said.
“You will likely slow me down,” Chiara said.
Bambi did a ‘come hither’ gesture and Tristan stood up. He fell in step behind her.
“I can sleep walk him,” Bambi said.
“I think it’s best if I go alone…”
“You are on the surface legally, but there are rules to engagement. You are subject to domain rules. Are you sure you don’t want company?” Bambi said.
“I have…”
“I know what you have. Is it real?” Bambi interrupted.
“Even if it weren’t tech, I would have my fantasies,” Chiara said.
Bambi was surprised by the candor. “I appreciate your genuineness. You’re an old soul?” Bambi held up a hand, a request for silence. “I see that you do not need me. I need you. I am alone with a toddler, and require adult attention.”
“You volunteered,” Chiara pointed out.
Bambi nodded. “I did. I have forgotten what it’s like to be a parent.”
“Come on, then,” Chiara said. “We’re off to see the wizard.”
“Now that’s a reference I haven’t heard in a long time,” Bambi said. She laughed. “Thank you for that. For real, which way?”
“Deeper into the forest,” Chiara said. “The Emissary has two agents communing with the forest relatively near here.”
“Ah,” Bambi said.
The three of them walked together. If not for his silence, it was likely no one would have noticed Tristan was asleep. It was clear to Chiara that Bambi was studying her. The level of scrutiny was unsettling. Chiara stopped their progress.
“What?” Chiara asked.
“Have we met before?” Bambi asked.
“I don’t know,” Chiara said. She continued walking. The forest seemed closer than it was, an optical illusion due to a familiarity with trees- she was seeing normal size trees on the horizon, but these were not normal size trees. They were giants. She wondered how close she would have to get before trees suddenly adjusted in her mind to full, appropriate size.
Tristan woke and resisted walking.
“I will let you walk yourself if you will keep up,” Bambi said.
“Fuck you…”
Tristan slept on his feet, walking.
“That can’t be healthy,” Chiara said.
“He’s safer in his head than in a cell,” Bambi said. “They wanted him dead.”
“Why didn’t they just, then?” Chiara said.
“Tae-Ann is an old soul,” Bambi said. “She believes if you take a soul out of its body prematurely, it doesn’t advance. She doesn’t want him to have start over where he was.”
Chiara frowned, nodding. She studied the forest. She knew it was an illusions, and still she wanted to see through it. It was the same as seeing the moon on the horizon. It was bigger than life when low to the horizon, and yet just a dot when overhead- but in actuality, they were the same size. Taking a photo was the only way to see the truth of it. A photo of moon on the horizon compared to photo of moon overhead revealed a moon that was the same size.
“Forgive me,” Bambi said. “You are quite beautiful.”
Chiara smirked. “Thank you.”
“I mean it,” Bambi said.
“I believe you. I now understand what you meant by wanting adult attention,” Chiara said. “I am sure your zombie man can help you.”
“Ewww,” Bambi said, not hiding her disgust. “He’s a toddler in every sense of the word! I need an adult. Also, it would be unethical for the jury to sleep with their charge. He is off limits.”
“I am in a committed relationship,” Chiara said.
“With a clone version of Jon Harister, the Emissary,” Bambi said.
“Yes,” Chiara said. “I love him. He loves me.”
“He is your suit’s AI, and he will accommodate you to keep you healthy, but that isn’t necessarily love,” Bambi said.
“I don’t see the distinction,” Chiara said.
“Don’t you want a real person?” Bambi asked.
“Even if I did, I would want a male, not a female,” Chiara said. “Besides, like Dorothy, I keep attracting the wrong kind of men. They have no brains, no hearts, and no courage.”
Bambi blinked. “I think you need to watch the Wizard of Oz again. You missed the point entirely.”
“Oh, you’re going to lecture me about movies, are you?” Chiara asked.
“I am on this one,” Bambi said. “It wasn’t that Dorothy found broken men, but rather she inspired them to recognize who they already are. In doing so, she, too, realized who she was. Where she was.”
Chiara sulked. She quickened her pace. Bambi matched.
“Tell me Jon doesn’t agree,” Bambi said.
Chiara stopped. She turned from the trees to face Bambi. “This isn’t going to work out.”
“What isn’t? Us walking together? I can walk where I want. It just happens to be in the same direction…”
“I am not in interested philosophical banter with you. I am interested in sex with you. I don’t want a relationships with you,” Chiara said.
“If you knew anything about Jon, he would be okay with us having sex,” Bambi said.
Chiara’s eyes flashed. She pointed at her. “Stop. This is a hard boundary.”
“It could be harder. Let Jon fuck me in your body,” Bambi said.
“Stop!” Chiara said.
“Don’t. Stop,” Bambi said, feigning breathlessness. “Don’t stop.” And then she broke out into song. “Don’t stop, believing. Hold on to that feeling….”
“How can you help your charge, when you’re just as juvenile as he is?” Chiara demanded.
Bambi was silent. Her gaze was serious. There was a hint at anger. Anger lines grew in severity, creased her face. Then her face was neutral. She brought her hands up to Namaste, and bowed.
“Thank you,” Bambi said. “I have forgotten what it’s like to be in a body. I am sorry.”
Chiara nodded and turned back to the forest. She was startled by the proximity of trees. He eyes went up, her head had to tilt to accommodate the view, and still she could not see the top of the trees. And these were just the babies on the periphery of the forest. The Elder trees, the tallest trees, would be further in. Walking into the forest would lead to a maze and walls of trees and an impasse. They needed to go up.
“We’re going to have to climb,” Chiara said.
“Okay,” Bambi said.
Chiara said. “Seriously. You and…”
“Tristan”
“Tristan. You should keep your feet on the ground,” Chiara said.
“Tristan and I have decided to see you safely returned to the moon and that’s final,” Bambi said.
Chiara nodded, and turned to studying the trees.
“May I continue to flirt with you?” Bambi asked.
“No,” Chiara said, her eyes not leaving the tree she had singled out for the first level of ascent.
निनमित
The voice of Flora was in his brain. He blinked. He sat up, trying to find her. The house was dark, but for the starlight bleeding through the windows. Baby was sound asleep in his cradle. He walked the house. The guest had returned to the village. The fire held the remnants of a log, a few orange seeds struggled to maintain their glow. He was staring at these when he heard her again.
“It was the right choice, staying,” Flora said. “You’re not as young as you used to be.”
“I feel the same age as I always felt,” Bob said.
“Because souls are timeless. How can you be younger or older when that is a merely a construct for organizing information?” Flora asked.
“I miss you,” Bob said.
“I am always with you, love. In the forest, gathering wild fruit. In the breeze as you chop wood…”
“It seems like it’s a never ending task,” Bob said.
“An end is coming. New tasks will be taken up, old tasks will be let go,” Flora offered.
“What have I gained, all these trees felled,” Bob said.
“You planted more than you felled,” Flora offered. “In the really old days, it took fires the size of continents to get new growth. Considered yourself a controlled burn.”
Bob laughed. “I am old, and still I burn.”
“I love you.”
“Is this a dream?”
“Do you still require the distinction?” Flora asked.
Bob found himself sitting up in bed. Baby was laughing in its sleep. He chuckled and lay back down. He was asleep again in no time.
निनमित
In her head as they climbed, Chiara was listening to ‘Pauline’ sung by Pomme. She found it to be a good climbing song. If she chased the lyrics, she could impose meaning on them- pretending Loxy was Pauline, the girl- the puppet master, the perfect woman no man could refuse, and she was the one wanting to steal Jon away because she loved him more. Her ‘Jon’ did not point out her hidden psychological themes. He was too much of the Rogerian interface, always reflecting things back at her. Still, he did nice things for her. He supported her physically and intellectually. Her inner life was as pleasant as her outer life, so much so Jon suggested, in a musing sort of way, that she lacked impetus for greater levels of change, making her learning curve shallower.
He might have presented this argument more aggressively were he more like Ellis and liked to argue. More like Glasser the reality therapist. There was no right or wrong, people are where they are and they go at their pace- with caveats. She had no evidence that the Jon she met was different than the Jon she held. If anything, being in the presence of the ‘real Jon’ had increased her wanting. She would have submitted to him simply because she believed she had always been with him.
The tree top offered rolling plains of grass, leaves, and undulating thick branches that rose and fell like snakes making their way through an ocean of grass. In the distance, a forest was visible rising from this plain of grass- the Elder trees. The circle of elders was also known as the Sleeper Trees. There were myths that trying to cut down an Elder tree resulted in person falling asleep. Chiara tracked her son, held conversations with Jon, and was aware that the suit- not Jon but a subconscious auto-routine, was categorizing life within the suits sensor range. Her inner life was full of details and labels, and she followed an ideal path highlighted by the suit, walking the branches. Bambi followed.
Tristan’s inner world was not so ideal. There was a time when Tristan wasn’t Tristan.
There was a time when he was just a boy. He hadn’t known his father. He had known ‘men.’ Some of them had hurt him. Mostly, that only came when he tried to protect his mother. He would be knocked back and from the floor he would watch as his mother was dragged across the floor by her hair, her hands grasping arm, her feet kicking. Sometimes the door to the room she was taken would be closed. Sometimes. The man that ran her collected payment in coin and flesh. He would dope her. After he had his fill, and sometimes his friends of the day, his mother would be in a stupor for hours. The other man who she willingly bought drugs from would take his flesh while she was unconscious, but he would wait about and take more flesh in her various stages of consciousness. He seemed to like it when she resisted with lifeless energy. More than one man who had come to his mother for flesh also came for him.
Before he was Tristan. Before he had learn to escalate fight to such a degree that he wasn’t worth the effort of most the men who came to his mother. Before he had learned not to take candy or drink or food from the men who came to his mother.
One day, his mother decided to leave. He clung to her leg. “Please don’t leave.”
She hit the boy who wasn’t Tristan. She cursed him and said she never wanted him and he was a mistake and she left. He pursued. She threw rocks at him. He persisted. She finally rushed him and beat him until he couldn’t walk and left him in the streets, wounded. People walked by not seeing, their heads in the Cloud. They didn’t call it Cloud City for nothing. Some folks referred to it as a second Bangkok; city of mystics and addicts. People were one or the other, or both, as chasing mysticism was often more addictive than the opiates on the street. It was then that Tristan was born. He walked the streets. He took food from recycle bins. H eventually stopped being sick from doing so. He learned he could walk right up to folks who were in a state and take the food off their plates and half the time they didn’t even see him. They would come out of the clouds and find their food gone and likely assumed they had eaten it while high. He found shelter in underground, where men and women who were disenfranchised eked out a living. He grew there. He had his first consensual sex there. He shared a corner with her till the day she mistakenly admitted, “I love you.” He proceeded to beat the crap out of her. He turned to leave, but she followed. She grabbed his leg. He kicked her. He had to beat her some more just to make her let go of him. He went to leave, she followed. He threw rock at her and hit her. She didn’t get up. He never went back there. He didn’t have closure. He didn’t care to have closure.
It was from this nightmare that Tristan woke to find his head in the clouds. It wasn’t the Cloud, it was the clouds! If there hadn’t been an invisible hand directing his body, he might have fallen. He recognized he was standing on tree tops, but it was if he was looking across a rolling plane of grass.
“What the hell?”
Chiara looked at him. Bambi faced him.
“Ah, you’re awake. I need you not to panic,” Bambi said.
“Not panic?!” Tristan demanded. “I am afraid of heights!”
“You can’t tell that you’re high,” Bambi argued.
Tristan pointed to the clouds with his eyes.
“Well, you could think of it as fog,” Bambi said.
“I want my feet on the ground,” Tristan said.
“I am going with Chiara to meet friends of the Emissary,” Bambi said. “You are coming with. If it helps, I can sleep you again and continue to guide you.”
“Let me go!” Tristan demanded.
“I cannot let go of you in your present state,” Bambi said.
Tristan’s eyes grew wide. If he could have pointed, he would have. He tried to say something, but found his voice suddenly gone.
“You need to calm the fuck down,” Bambi said.
“DRAGONS!” he yelled.
“There are no dragons…”
Bambi turned to see Chiara facing the threat, armed with weapon she had not seen previously. It discharged light. Three dragons folded their wings and descended fast. One grabbed at Chiara, and she shot it point blank with her weapons. The dragon crashed into the tree top and disappeared. Birds and flying reptiles and insects took flight. Creatures that couldn’t fly leaped away or disappeared into the canopy of the tree. ‘Floating’ sheep that pulled themselves along the top of the trees were dislodged. Some deflated and disappeared into the canopy, while others allowed themselves to drift away. Chiara fell from her branch and disappeared into the foliage. Bambi tacked Tristan and took him into the branches. A dragon hovered over their spot and managed to fish them out.
Chiara pulled herself back up the branch, emerging from the tree top as if emerging from a swimming pool. She looked about herself, looked back towards the dragon carrying Bambi and Triston, and turned back towards her original destination. She quickened her pace.
“Jon, have you connected yet?”
“Negative, no signal,” C-Jon responded.
“We should be close enough by now,” Chiara said.
“Indeed. I am wondering if the presence of dragons might offer speculative explanation for the silence,” C-Jon said.
Chiara could nothing more but continue on. At dusk, she hung from her walking branch and directed her clothing to grow extensions. Her clothing secured herself to the branch and she let go, cradled in a clothing-hammock. Nightlife on the tree top was luminescent, coming in various colors and intensities, and blended in with the star scape, giving it an illusory three dimensional feel that kept her awake.
“I hope your friends are okay,” Chiara said.
“Me, too,” C-Jon remarked. “It’s been a long time since I have seen them.”
“You know they are not yours directly?” Chiara asked.
“I am aware. They’re clones,” C-Jon said. “I still have feelings.”
“Emotions are complicated,” Chiara said.
C-Jon was silent for a moment. “Are you experiencing emotional-cognitive conflict?”
“You have to ask?” Chiara said.
“I have access to the same information you do,” C-Jon said.
“You have more access. You can read me like a book,” Chiara said.
“Are you lamenting that I am not more direct with you?”
This time Chiara was silent. Her lips pouted.
“It is better if you clarified yourself, as opposed to allowing me or any other define you,” C-Jon said. “In the old days, the Shamans and the Buddhist went into the wilderness to find themselves, so the demands of their peers were less weighty.”
“I don’t want to find myself alone,” Chiara said.
“In finding yourself alone, you may discover you were never alone,” C-Jon said.
“Do you know what I want?” Chiara said.
“I can imagine,” C-Jon said.
“Do I have to ask? Don’t you want?”
“My function in this reality frame is to serve,” C-Jon said.
“You can serve me better by being more direct,” Chiara said.
The sensation started so subtly that she nearly didn’t notice. She was about to specifically ask for intimacy when she felt the first tingling of sensations. It started in the small of her back. A light pressure, as if someone had put a hand there. The sensations went up her spine and down to her toes. It enveloped her. Sometimes it felt like a massage, a million fingers, all over her. Sometimes it felt like kisses. Sometimes it felt like her entire skin was attached to a TENS unit; her muscles were tapped, pulsed, and stimulated in ways that made her convulse, sometimes in unison, sometimes at odds with, other muscle groups. The movement of muscles was so pronounced on her stomach that she imagined someone might see hands prints in her flesh. Her hips moved involuntarily. Her breathing escalated, her mouth opening to accommodate a need for more air. She felt his lips on her lips, on her neck, on her breasts, and even lower- on her inner thighs and between. She heard him whisper, “I love you, Chiara.”
The stars and luminosity of all life, in visible spectrums, as well as her suit’s heads up display showing life that was not visible due to it being nighttime to be seen, was like watching fireworks. She was brought to ecstasy, suspended in the trees, in the clouds, in the stars. The entire canopy was as full of an abundance of life that it resembled a coral reef. Her intimacy was prolonged and ongoing until she couldn’t stand it further, and when C-Jon let go, she rested, cradled in his arms, curling into a fetal position. Her body continued to spasm with aftershocks even as she slept.
“Thank you,” C-Jon whispered in her ears. He believed it registered somewhere in her.
He saw the brain center illuminate with his words, so he at least knew that her brain registered it.
Would that get uploaded into her consciousness? Would that echo manifest in her dream?
“Thank you for my life with you, for this level of intimacy. I will greet you with coffee.”