Cent's Yuenyeung [ Too Much Tea, Not Enough Coffee ]

To: Cent, Realized Their Purpose

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Hello, Cent,

I appreciate your reply.

My first name is something that has grown to disgust myself.

Alternatively, you may use another one. I had a friend once who remained on the fringes of many things. In their memory, I took the name Visilit, meaning "boundary walker." So that the memory is kept in our own walks along these boundaries, let us use that name for myself.

It's good to hear that there is plenty out there, interesting and creative things. Being cloistered too often you get the impression that there's not much ever. Though there hasn't been much recently.

A long time ago I also felt the constancy of thought. These days, more and more often, it all fades into a certain silence. Sometimes it is like an animal that has been fed too little, and has decided to lay down for eternal sleep.

Other times small things flit about and demand attention, but I know that they will never be addressed. So I have left them also to rot, and now even the resentment towards myself comes less and less. Without even this tether, would that also be my fate, in the end? Slowly, it's like you fall out of the world.

I wonder if ... something should change. How do you establish footing once again? It's too easy to lose your grip and forget what it's like to really exist, to take comfort

There is so little here. So little about. And the messages that we can exchange, as they are, are little sustenance in that way. The energy that we all use in keeping these connections... how much of that well is dried up with each draw?

Yours,
With good wishes.

To: Visilit, With Good Wishes

I get not wanting to use a given name completely, so I'd be happy to call you Visilit. Names we go by have a lot of significance, and that significance can change and be warped. I guess it can feel like pain and trauma with one name can be set aside sometimes, if you're going by a better one.

Does seem like our problems with thought are different in some ways, yeah. My mind is always running with stress, but moreso anxiety, and it has trouble going anywhere productive. I can think of things I'd like to work on, but my mind drifts away from those things in a 'pragmatic' sense. Like, it's telling me, Cent, you aren't going to be able to do that. Why even bother thinking about it?

But the thinking about it is always an option. Getting excited over it is still possible. And I suppose even if those things were gone, too, I'd still want to remind myself that I've made good things before, that I've done decent things before, and I'm not a tractor whose parts fall out and can't be replaced. My chitin's always growing out, you know?

...I guess that isn't a catch-all. I don't want to throw my own weak advice at you with any promise it'd help. I'm barely getting by right now, and not with flying colors. It does seem good that you're reaching out, if nothing else. And... I really do empathize with what you're saying.

What sort of stuff is going on in your life right now? You can be vague if you'd like, but a tether to physical happenings can be a nice thing from time to time. Have you eaten anything nice lately? Maybe a really good cup of coffee, or tea?

Honestly, even a good night's sleep can be something to celebrate. More and more I'm thinking of it as a well, like you mentioned. It dries up, it fills up. There's so much external and internal that it's impossible to predict, but you know the feeling when it's empty.

Recently I slept for a full night, from before New York got dark to after it got bright again. That's a weird feeling. When you're addled on actual rest, the artificial rest of caffeine is like nails on chalkboard, for a second.

Sorry if that's not a great topic, but like I said, trying to give legitimate advice seems like a real fallacy to me! After all, I'm far from a shining example.

But, I guess, I'm messaging you now. And you've messaged me back. So we've done better than nothing together.

Thanks for the good wishes, Visilit.

- I Will Reply

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To: Cent, Realized Their Purpose

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Okay, mystery solved. My special dot is something called an "acute" and it looks like this: í

I'm sure if I'd let that question remain unanswered it would have developed into a hilarious inside joke or something. Oh well. Individuality wasn't really a thing back at the hive, so none of us were ever given names other than the queen. So I picked mine myself. I just one day scrolled through a list of mythological characters from an old human religion and found one I liked. I also named some of my hivemates this way. That friend who I said got squeezed dead by a finger plant, I named him Baldr. Um, he actually died from caffeine deprivation. I liked my version better honestly. Oh, and the one who I said gave hugs to the finger plants when high on The Devil, I named her Njörun. And that did actually happen.

So funny story, the flower I originally dubbed "The Devil" was long dead before your first email. It's just sort of become what I call flowers now. You'd think a hive of bees would help the flower population tons, but for some reason the worker bees have been unable to carry pollen ever since the queen died eight years ago. So things have just sort of been slowly dying off. Caffeine keeps the bugs alive, and a stash of seeds keep the Devils returning.

I'm not actually alone at the gas station. I'm technically violating some sort of contract by being here, so I'm really shy about talking to him. He's really huge. He chopped down the finger plants and ate them for lunch! He punched the dark god in the face! His name is Berry, and he's one of those massive armored beetles. He showed up a few months ago to replace Kron, the previous station caretaker, who disappeared last year.

Berry is from the east, where the ant wars are still in full force. He keeps talking about how the tractor ants are gonna kill us all someday. Apparently there's an ant colony that has hijacked a broken down tractor and turned it into a war machine. It sounds absolutely devastating. And amazing. If the ant wars ever calm down, I might just head over there to see the ant tractor for myself.

Your replies are an absolute joy to read. Life is bleak, and being sent some positivity now and then is just really nice. So I've decided to disregard the garden gnome's warning. What does it know anyway? Nothing, it's an inanimate object. It's not even real, I made it up to foreshadow that this would be my last message. Not anymore, though! So take that, stupid imaginary garden gnome! Right now I'm really just waiting for Ore to come by with the next shipment of caffeine. I'll try to join her on the way back, and I'll figure things out from there I guess. Messages from me might become more rare if I'm gonna be on the go most of the time. So if it takes me a while to respond from now on, that's probably why.

To: Mímir, Concerned

Acute observation on the acute! Glad to finally have the right name in the subject line, haha.

I've heard the occasional thing or two about bee life in the current era, but I didn't know there were still hives out there that didn't name their people-- that sounds... demoralizing. I think names let us discover ourselves in all sorts of ways, and taking away someone's name takes away their ability to be known and spoken to by other people. Without the name Baldr, that bee could have been just about anyone, could have been made up. But with the name, that story and that name represent a person, not just a thought.

There are some books out there about people that hesitate to name anyone. It feels less like a book about people and more about a book about that person's experience, like everyone else involved is just some cog in a machine about them. That's what the hive experience seems like-- nobody is anything but their purpose and their actions. The reality is we're all living something internal, and that's what a name gives us. It validates us having feelings about our lives.

I guess you've probably thought about this kind of thing, since you've given names to yourself and others!

Maybe that's a sign of things to come, bees not carrying as much pollen. I read something the other day that a lot of flowers in the northern hemisphere have totally shifted to self-pollination. There just aren't enough of us around to give them anything better. I'm not exactly a botanist, but I wonder if trees are going to face the same issue? I always hoped there'd be a boom in plantlife when I was young, because I heard we get to grow bigger the more oxygen is in the atmosphere, but that doesn't seem to be happening anywhere except cities, where it used to be constantly trimmed.

And, I mean, my neighbors eat all the ivy anyway, so home has never been the green paradise I was picturing as a nymph.

Berry sounds like a fun person-- I've always liked bugs who are willing to punch dark gods in the face. Tractor ants don't sound nice at all, though. I've heard of the occasional war, but that sounds downright terrifying, if it's at all real. The world mostly feels calm right now, since nobody's fighting over space, but it's still shitty to hear about conflict of any kind. Are ants really getting attacked- killed- even nowadays? Maybe I'm still too naive over things. I feel like it's only in the last couple of years that I've been wary about shitty people and betrayal.

It's really nice to hear that these replies give you joy, Mímir. The emails I get from folks like you give me a ton of joy to read, too. I'm starting to not feel as awful trying to write replies, even! There's still plenty of worry that it'll stop, but until then...

I hope Ore's as nice as my friend Tieni, and you get to see some more of the world. At the least, you aren't going to have to worry about caffeine shipments getting to you, haha.

- I Will Reply

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To: Cent, Realized Their Purpose

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Hello. Hello. Hello!

Just saw this email. I don't check this address very much ... But I am very glad someone is out there with a project like this! I'm a little late, I know, but if you're still doing this, I would love to be part of it!

To: Part Of Things

Hey, you're not late at all. We're all working on life at our own pace, and I guess the huge advantage of the Internet is that it is appropriately asynchronous. We don't have to be anywhere near each other, or anywhere near the same time, to speak like it's casual. It isn't like anyone's going to be signing up to deliver physical mail, haha.

Welcome to the project, I suppose! I'm Cent, I live in Bends, Brooklyn, so the ground's a little further down for me than a lot of people I've met over these emails. I've explored a slight bit more of the city now, and I can report that at least one of the tourist destinations is pretty fun, even with the bartender gone.

I just started hanging out with the caffeine delivery bug for our building, and it's been pretty exhilarating, pretty exhausting. I think it might've just been these emails that convinced me to try meeting someone like that.

How about you? Any big changes-- anything about the world you're living in that might rock someone else's?

- I Will Reply

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It'd be easier to visit if he were down a few floors, not in an entirely different building on the fifty-second floor. Still, now and then, when things didn't feel so exhausting, Cent would make the trek. She didn't want to inconvenience Tieni by asking for a ride upward ever, so it was the few hours up Craters' stairwell in solace, and then an exhausted roach peeled herself off the concrete and into her dad's hovel,

then a couple more hours waiting for her stepdad to head to sleep before she could do much more than make small talk anxiously,

then a couple more hours watching television with her dad, and then it was too late to do much of anything but sit on the balcony and muse.

Conversation was fleeting and temporary, and generally she wouldn't get to talk about any of the things she wanted to. They'd joke plenty and find time to laugh with each other, because her sense of humor and his sense of humor had partial overlap and partial clash, and they'd talk a little bit about the world, and Cent would mention bees having names, and flowers dying out, and the bartender who told humans to go to space and leave their little planet behind.

"Yeah," she said, to not much in particular, "I don't know. I don't talk to people... for 'real', lately. It feels like they don't want to talk to me."

He tilted his roach head. "Really?"

Cent wasn't sure. "I'm not sure," she said, unsure. Being sure of anything relating to people would clear things up and remove anxiety, it would make her feel comfortable with interaction without constantly questioning intent, but she wasn't at all. "I met Bends' caffeine carrier, and she's really, really nice. And I've been talking to the neighbors more. But, uh... there's no... I don't know, it's easier to talk to friends from when I was younger, somehow. It feels like there's a barrier." She'd heard of such things, and was hoping he'd put forth some kind of sympathy.

Instead, Sir Penney sipped at the mug of tea and nodded slowly. "Yeah." Obviously there was understanding, but he wasn't going to say much of anything. That was his way.

"Tieni's really nice, though. Really nice. I guess I just feel like it's a brick wall with some things I say, like I have the whole wrong idea how she is."

"Probably not. I'm sorry you feel like that, though," he mused.

Cent let out a weak sigh and sat and stared. There was so much more distance above the ground, but it rarely felt that way. It was so much effort to get here, and she wasn't sure what it'd do to her once she got home. She'd already sent the emails, so what was she going to do except sit in a pit and go on the Internet? The roach spoke, even though she wasn't completely sure about it. "Have you, uh-- had you met Tieni at all? She probably fills your building's things up too, right?"

Penney nodded. "The mantis? Yeah, I remember her from Bends. Your mom didn't love the, uhm." His beady, slightly damaged eyes glanced away, off towards blinking lights on a rooftop. "Yeah."

"Yeah," Cent agreed. There was some shared bitterness there. "I guess I might-- I don't know. I had the idea maybe I could try and go with her on a trip, or learn about caffeine mixing, or something like that. It seems interesting to me. It's pretty important."

To this, her dad nodded and chuckled deep, mandibles buzzing. "Holy hell, it's important. If that's something you'd be interested in, that sounds great."

She shrugged, but now she was riding a little bit of a high, like she finally had a little direction in life. Cent didn't know how to explain how much the email gig meant, but maybe other things would have meaning in time, too. "It's interesting to me when she talks about it. I remember Mom used to have me make her coffees when I was old enough, and it was always so much fun."

"It'd probably be a lot of delivering things to people," Penney noted.

"See, but I'd like that too." She turned to face him, clenching one leg against her side to stay grounded on the no-ground balcony. "I mean, I think I would. I like meeting new people, and I've gotten better at it. I guess it's all just... theory in my head right now, so, yeah."

He slowly nodded with a little grin on his mandibles. "It's good seeing you excited, so it sounds like it'll be a good thing." His beady eyes went back towards the horizon line, then down at the big mug in his lap, and then finally to Cent as he offered it forward. "You want some to keep you up?"

The roach took in a soft breath. She hadn't had tea in some years. "...Oh, yeah, why not? I guess I have to get going to make the trek down."

"You could spend the night, if you're too tired right now."

"No, no, it's totally okay." She nodded and took the mug. A waft of herbal smell almost sent her antennae flying. "I don't really... I have to do some stuff online early tomorrow at home, and I've got to head down eventually anyways."

Penney nodded slow. Cent had no idea if the act of leaving would hurt his cockroach soul, and she wouldn't know unless he spoke of it, which he tended not to. "It is past midnight. You really have to be careful going down the stairs-- they're apparently never going to fill the middle."

"I'm fiiine." The tea tasted like mildly burnt flowers. Cent drank most of the mug and smiled with exhaustion.

"Alright, good," he said, and nodded again. He stood up. She stood up.

"Yeah,"

"Yeah."

"Alright,"

"Alright, sounds good."

"Yeah."

Eventually, Cent was outside the apartment again, then slumping down the stairs, then she was deep into a half-hour of surreal, repetitive pacing. She could leap down the center and hope her wings were enough to keep her upright, but she'd learned early enough and thoroughly enough not to do so, to keep her cool, to reduce leaps and flight, to return to ground as safely as the caffeine made her. The tisane kept her buzzing another few hours once she'd trekked to Bends, then she spent another hour trying to detach from the computer,

then another half-hour on the computer anyhow

and then

caffeine buzzing through her system, she figures a coffee might as well go down, and she sleeps once she's drunk it all,

a terrible kind of sleep where nothing feels restful

because nothing is

Cent ruined her week for one night of sleeplessness. It would be impossible to get that back. It would be impossible to wake back up with any sense of continuity. When she listened to music as part of the dopamine drip, she would never be able to listen from the beginning of an album, because every single one would be half-way-listened. This would be her week. She would wake halfway awake and sleep halfway asleep. Each day would blend together.

She knew all this on the Tuesday night before it happened, and woke unprepared to divert from her inevitable course towards the center.