Order and Chaos

You said yes, but you say no.

I remembered this moment.

I remembered that I agreed, and set into motion a sequence of events that lead to my own murder at my own hands, with myself as the only witness, who was framed and later killed by me.

And as I remembered all that, I couldn't help but wonder. What if I said no this time? What would happen.

So I did.

Or rather, I tried. But the only word I heard myself say was...

yes!!

"Excellent," Sir Nose said, and I realized I was back in the present, or perhaps the future. But what I'd said wasn't what I'd meant.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted it to stop.

But I couldn't. I wasn't in control of myself. There was nothing I could do, except watch on helplessly as he lead me to the front of the carriage...

Wait a minute. I was watching myself. Where was I watching from?

"But you and I, we have been blessed with the irresistible gift of Funkentelechy: the ability to be in more than one person, at a time."

So I was watching myself... from another point of view? But whose? I definitely wasn't Sir Nose, but who else was in the carriage? I hadn't seen anybody. I couldn't be anybody.

But I could be, and slowly realized I was, nobody. I had been right after all; I was Nothing.

It's just that I was also Mary, and heaven knew who else.

I wasn't about to give my nonexistent self a headache trying to figure out exactly what had happened, though. I had more important things to do.

Throw him out of the carriage

"You'll love it in the Parliament," Sir Nose said. "We have AAAAGGHHH!"

Whatever they had would remain a mystery, because nothing had just pushed Sir Nose out of his own carriage and into the endless depths of white below. Mary shook her head and groaned as she started to feel like myself again. Even if I wasn't entirely sure just who that was.


"Don't get back to me until you have an offer that doesn't require lying to me about who I am! Or who I'm not, I guess."

He shouted something back, but at that point I didn't care what it was. I was still trying to understand myself.

I turned to the me who wasn't there. It wasn't doing anything, but it was definitely a conspicuous absence.

"So now what do I do?" I asked myself.

I was a bit surprised to get an answer.

It's time for me to live up to my family name and face full life consequences

Well, I am still an ambassador, technically. And there's a war that I tried to start and to stop as various people. I might want to do something about that.

The war. Of course. I'd been so focused on who or what I was - or wasn't - that the war had nearly slipped my mind. It was obvious now - Sir Nose and his employers wanted me out of the way while they continued their machinations.

And I was no longer in any mood to oblige them. I was going to put a stop to this war, as well as whatever else they were up to. I no longer cared about what they could do to me.

But I needed a plan. What could I even do?