Re: Mini-Grand 5104 (Final Round: The Treasury)
10-08-2011, 04:05 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by Lord Paradise.
Hector’s earliest memory was of the emptiness of space.
The grass brushed against his cheek and his… his cat was tucked in between his legs. He couldn’t have been more than four. In a world where there was so much to look at right in front of his face, this was the first time the young Hector had ever bothered to look up and consider that which lay beyond.
“Hector!” Mom called from indoors. “Bedtime in five minutes!”
The idea of bedtime seemed silly and insignificant to Hector, who felt like he was already dreaming. “Mom,” he said. “Can you come out here?”
“Of course, honey.” Hector’s mother was a, uh… a veterinarian, all smiles and caring. She shut the screen door behind her and lay down behind Hector.
“Mom,” Hector said softly. “What’s out there?”
Mom turned on her side to face Hector (she was young and had enormous breasts, which on a psychological level did a lot to explain several of Hector’s later choices). “I don’t know, honey,” she said warmly. “Lots of amazing things, I’m sure. Maybe you’ll be the one to go out there and find out.”
And Hector had smiled at that. Of course, later in life his priorities had changed. Because he’d found Helen out there, and that was all he needed.
* * * * *
The emptiness beyond the front door of Hector’s house was different. There was nothing out there and nowhere he wanted to go. He shut the door and turned to face his wife.
”Hector,” she said, still holding the knife. ”Hector, I’m not happy.”
”Oh, is that right? I wouldn’t have guessed!”
”No, Hector. I’m not happy, and the Core… everything’s going to shit. I’m sorry.” She began to cry. The front door slammed open, as though the void were pushing to get into the house.
Hector ran to embrace his wife. She pushed him away with the flat of the knife. ”Stay away!”
”No, Helen, I’m not going to stay away.” He couldn’t see the floor anymore. “What went wrong between us?”
”First the fake memories go,” said Helen, as though that explained anything. ”Then the real ones. I don’t remember either of our weddings anymore…”
And Helen cut her own throat. It wasn’t until she fell to the floor dead that Hector noticed the blob attached to the back of her skull.
* * * * *
Obfuscation got the idea that something great had just happened! He didn’t remember what but now there was a dead body and everyone was screaming and it was like a party. There was a shiny thing falling out of the dead lady’s hands and it went over to the shiny thing and saw its reflection in the shiny bits. Obfuscation had forgotten what it looked like, so this was a really big moment for the blob! It reached for its reflection and suddenly felt really really powerful. What a wonderful day.
* * * * *
It was almost a mercy to Hector that the first thing he forgot was her dying. The Obfuscation’s effect was more focused then it had been before; it started from the top and radiated outwards like a mushroom cloud, reducing all before it to oblivion. Within ten seconds Hector had forgotten about the Grand Battle entirely.
* * * * *
Memories dash against each other and annihilate like atomic dominos:
-Hector sits alone in his room watching vines grow all around the walls, taking root under his bed. He’s not afraid. His friends have been wondering where he’s been of late.
-Hector locks himself up in the locker room of the gym to stop his coach from finding the Italian Greyhound he’d just created. In the end he is forced to vent the dog out the airlock; later he’s unable to explain what he’d been doing in there or why he’s crying, leading the family psychiatrist to come to some conclusions of his own.
-Hector is on a date with a long-time friend, walking through a factory floor. She’s trying to engage eye contact, but he keeps looking over at the machines, the way they move. He notices several seagulls perched up on the rafters, staring down at the young couple. He makes an excuse to leave, which his friend sees through immediately. She asks if she’s done something wrong, but he only says “goodbye.”
-Hector’s friend Michael catches a cold, baffling the medical staff. After watching him sneeze for six hours they vacuum his entire body and place him in a mental asylum for six weeks; Hector knows it’s his fault. A lot of things have been his fault lately.
-Hector watches a bird impale a cockroach upon its beak. He is confused and horrified until he sees the thing eat its prey, after which he is confused and horrified with a little context.
-There’s a flower blooming on Hector’s desk. He’s afraid.
-Before his power (now forgotten) emerges. Linda, a young woman Hector’s age, asks for a kiss. The notion of a girl being interested in him is so strange to him that he declines before giving it any real thought. Later, he decides it is just as well; he probably couldn’t have gone through with it anyway.
-A younger-still Hector wins a local Young Writers’ contest with a poem he’d spent weeks meticulously editing. When his parents get the news, he refuses to let them see what he’d written.
-Hector is dragged along to visit his great-great-grandfather, a rare case of untreatable senility at one hundred and fifty years old. The elder Metah beckons his great-great-grandson close and whispers in his ear, “The fox may be smarter than the hounds, but the hounds still find their mark nine times out of ten.” Correctly assuming this to be mere nonsense, Hector never repeats this to anybody.
-Hector’s earliest memory was of the emptiness of space.
Walking through the corridors with his family, the boy (he couldn’t be more than four) spies a rare transparent pane on the exterior wall of the worldship. He wrests himself away from his mother’s grip and runs over to touch the glass, staring outside. In a world with so little to look at, this is the first time he has had the opportunity to consider that what lies beyond.
“Mom,” Hector says softly. “What’s out there?”
Hector’s mother is a psychiatrist, sly smiles and empathy. She takes her son’s hand and pulls him away. “There’s nothing out there, sweetener,” she says. “Nothing.”
* * * * *
First the fake memories go, then the real ones…
Underneath the mind that is Hector, there is a garden.
Everything in the garden has a name, and Adam is pleased. The garden is a part of him, as much as he is a part of the garden. It grew around him, grew from his love and his desire, grew the food he eats and the earth on which he rests. All his life, all his knowledge, stand as two trees amongst his creation.
His greatest creations, he thinks, are the names. But he is not done yet. He whispers the name of the serpent, and the serpent comes.
At his command, the serpent coils itself around Adam’s leg, climbing over his hips and abdomen to rest on his ribcage. Adam braces himself against the Tree of Life and issues another command, and the serpent bites.
Adam grimaces in pain. The poison cannot harm him—especially not while he grips the Tree of Life with one hand—but he cannot avoid the pain as the serpent clamps its fangs around his rib and begins to pull. It is several hours before the bone comes free; a stream of blood has sprouted into a field of roses around his feet. A stray millipede has made its home inside the incision, and as Adam’s body begins to heal itself, it narrowly scurries out before the regrowing skin seals it inside. Adam issues a word of thanks to the serpent, removing the bone from its mouth.
Adam contemplates his rib in the sunlight, studying it from all angles. However, it is not until the sun has set and the moon has risen that he seems to come to a decision. Setting the rib on the ground in front of him beneath the stars, he whispers her name.
This memory, too, is swept away the moment it is unburied.
* * * * *
There’s nothing out there. Nothing.
Two years later.
Hector’s face was barely visible beneath the bark of the tree. His mind had grown into the wood; hard and thoughtless, but content, slow-growing. Around him were a few scattered corpses, the nutrients of their bodies having long since been broken apart to support the ecosystem. Where once there had been a vault, now there was a jungle, and those who have wandered in since have forgotten that there was ever anything but a jungle.
On the very top of the highest branch of the tree where Hector now lived, Obfuscation remained wrapped around the Endorphic Core, happy as it ever had been. A sudden gust of wind caused the Core to totter and then fall to the ground, dislodging its passenger in its fall.
The feeling of continuity and thought returning to the world was like someone exhaling after holding his breath for two years. Hector’s eyes opened. He perceived (“he perceived” here being distinct from “there was”) a woman standing before him. She was naked, very pregnant, and nibbling about the edges of an apple, smiling as though savoring both the fruit and its implications. She noticed Hector looking at her. ”Hello, Hector,” she said. ”Do you know who I am?”
Hector nodded, his face gradually becoming distinct from the tree behind him. “You’re Eve,” he said. “Everyone’s mom. The first woman.”
”My husband used to call me the platonic form of femininity,” giggled Eve. ”He was better with women than you are, of course. ‘Women’ was his idea to begin with, you understand.”
Hector found that he did understand. “How long have I been—Helen!” He dislodged an arm from the wood around him and put it forth as though grabbing at something just out of reach.
”If you’re looking to get the girl back, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” said Eve. ”This is the other one. The Tree of Knowledge. You created it as a defense mechanism to keep you alive and hold your memories in place until you were in a position to get them back.”
Hector nodded absently. “I forgot.”
”You have a whole world inside of you, Hector. You have the power to never forget. What never forgets, Hector?”
Hector pulled a foot out from under a root. “Is this a riddle?” he asked.
”What never forgets? Here, try an apple.” Eve tossed her fruit at Hector. Hector looked at it for a moment as though it were a bomb, then bit into it.
He knew the answer immediately. “An elephant. An elephant never forgets. But… a goldfish only has seven seconds of memory. In a sane world I would have learned these things in second grade.”
”The sane world, like I said, is inside of you. But it’s not doing anyone much good here. You need to bring it home and let it out. If you can make things green again, eventually you can track down your own Tree of Life and bring her back. But to do that, you need to get home, Hector. And to get home, you need to win.”
By the time the words broached the distance from the woman’s mouth to Hector’s ears, Eve was already gone. Hector took another bite from the apple, and suddenly found his eyes drawn to the little blob lying in the grass not ten feet away.
Hector’s earliest memory was of the emptiness of space.
The grass brushed against his cheek and his… his cat was tucked in between his legs. He couldn’t have been more than four. In a world where there was so much to look at right in front of his face, this was the first time the young Hector had ever bothered to look up and consider that which lay beyond.
“Hector!” Mom called from indoors. “Bedtime in five minutes!”
The idea of bedtime seemed silly and insignificant to Hector, who felt like he was already dreaming. “Mom,” he said. “Can you come out here?”
“Of course, honey.” Hector’s mother was a, uh… a veterinarian, all smiles and caring. She shut the screen door behind her and lay down behind Hector.
“Mom,” Hector said softly. “What’s out there?”
Mom turned on her side to face Hector (she was young and had enormous breasts, which on a psychological level did a lot to explain several of Hector’s later choices). “I don’t know, honey,” she said warmly. “Lots of amazing things, I’m sure. Maybe you’ll be the one to go out there and find out.”
And Hector had smiled at that. Of course, later in life his priorities had changed. Because he’d found Helen out there, and that was all he needed.
* * * * *
The emptiness beyond the front door of Hector’s house was different. There was nothing out there and nowhere he wanted to go. He shut the door and turned to face his wife.
”Hector,” she said, still holding the knife. ”Hector, I’m not happy.”
”Oh, is that right? I wouldn’t have guessed!”
”No, Hector. I’m not happy, and the Core… everything’s going to shit. I’m sorry.” She began to cry. The front door slammed open, as though the void were pushing to get into the house.
Hector ran to embrace his wife. She pushed him away with the flat of the knife. ”Stay away!”
”No, Helen, I’m not going to stay away.” He couldn’t see the floor anymore. “What went wrong between us?”
”First the fake memories go,” said Helen, as though that explained anything. ”Then the real ones. I don’t remember either of our weddings anymore…”
And Helen cut her own throat. It wasn’t until she fell to the floor dead that Hector noticed the blob attached to the back of her skull.
* * * * *
Obfuscation got the idea that something great had just happened! He didn’t remember what but now there was a dead body and everyone was screaming and it was like a party. There was a shiny thing falling out of the dead lady’s hands and it went over to the shiny thing and saw its reflection in the shiny bits. Obfuscation had forgotten what it looked like, so this was a really big moment for the blob! It reached for its reflection and suddenly felt really really powerful. What a wonderful day.
* * * * *
It was almost a mercy to Hector that the first thing he forgot was her dying. The Obfuscation’s effect was more focused then it had been before; it started from the top and radiated outwards like a mushroom cloud, reducing all before it to oblivion. Within ten seconds Hector had forgotten about the Grand Battle entirely.
* * * * *
Memories dash against each other and annihilate like atomic dominos:
-Hector sits alone in his room watching vines grow all around the walls, taking root under his bed. He’s not afraid. His friends have been wondering where he’s been of late.
-Hector locks himself up in the locker room of the gym to stop his coach from finding the Italian Greyhound he’d just created. In the end he is forced to vent the dog out the airlock; later he’s unable to explain what he’d been doing in there or why he’s crying, leading the family psychiatrist to come to some conclusions of his own.
-Hector is on a date with a long-time friend, walking through a factory floor. She’s trying to engage eye contact, but he keeps looking over at the machines, the way they move. He notices several seagulls perched up on the rafters, staring down at the young couple. He makes an excuse to leave, which his friend sees through immediately. She asks if she’s done something wrong, but he only says “goodbye.”
-Hector’s friend Michael catches a cold, baffling the medical staff. After watching him sneeze for six hours they vacuum his entire body and place him in a mental asylum for six weeks; Hector knows it’s his fault. A lot of things have been his fault lately.
-Hector watches a bird impale a cockroach upon its beak. He is confused and horrified until he sees the thing eat its prey, after which he is confused and horrified with a little context.
-There’s a flower blooming on Hector’s desk. He’s afraid.
-Before his power (now forgotten) emerges. Linda, a young woman Hector’s age, asks for a kiss. The notion of a girl being interested in him is so strange to him that he declines before giving it any real thought. Later, he decides it is just as well; he probably couldn’t have gone through with it anyway.
-A younger-still Hector wins a local Young Writers’ contest with a poem he’d spent weeks meticulously editing. When his parents get the news, he refuses to let them see what he’d written.
-Hector is dragged along to visit his great-great-grandfather, a rare case of untreatable senility at one hundred and fifty years old. The elder Metah beckons his great-great-grandson close and whispers in his ear, “The fox may be smarter than the hounds, but the hounds still find their mark nine times out of ten.” Correctly assuming this to be mere nonsense, Hector never repeats this to anybody.
-Hector’s earliest memory was of the emptiness of space.
Walking through the corridors with his family, the boy (he couldn’t be more than four) spies a rare transparent pane on the exterior wall of the worldship. He wrests himself away from his mother’s grip and runs over to touch the glass, staring outside. In a world with so little to look at, this is the first time he has had the opportunity to consider that what lies beyond.
“Mom,” Hector says softly. “What’s out there?”
Hector’s mother is a psychiatrist, sly smiles and empathy. She takes her son’s hand and pulls him away. “There’s nothing out there, sweetener,” she says. “Nothing.”
* * * * *
First the fake memories go, then the real ones…
Underneath the mind that is Hector, there is a garden.
Everything in the garden has a name, and Adam is pleased. The garden is a part of him, as much as he is a part of the garden. It grew around him, grew from his love and his desire, grew the food he eats and the earth on which he rests. All his life, all his knowledge, stand as two trees amongst his creation.
His greatest creations, he thinks, are the names. But he is not done yet. He whispers the name of the serpent, and the serpent comes.
At his command, the serpent coils itself around Adam’s leg, climbing over his hips and abdomen to rest on his ribcage. Adam braces himself against the Tree of Life and issues another command, and the serpent bites.
Adam grimaces in pain. The poison cannot harm him—especially not while he grips the Tree of Life with one hand—but he cannot avoid the pain as the serpent clamps its fangs around his rib and begins to pull. It is several hours before the bone comes free; a stream of blood has sprouted into a field of roses around his feet. A stray millipede has made its home inside the incision, and as Adam’s body begins to heal itself, it narrowly scurries out before the regrowing skin seals it inside. Adam issues a word of thanks to the serpent, removing the bone from its mouth.
Adam contemplates his rib in the sunlight, studying it from all angles. However, it is not until the sun has set and the moon has risen that he seems to come to a decision. Setting the rib on the ground in front of him beneath the stars, he whispers her name.
This memory, too, is swept away the moment it is unburied.
* * * * *
There’s nothing out there. Nothing.
Two years later.
Hector’s face was barely visible beneath the bark of the tree. His mind had grown into the wood; hard and thoughtless, but content, slow-growing. Around him were a few scattered corpses, the nutrients of their bodies having long since been broken apart to support the ecosystem. Where once there had been a vault, now there was a jungle, and those who have wandered in since have forgotten that there was ever anything but a jungle.
On the very top of the highest branch of the tree where Hector now lived, Obfuscation remained wrapped around the Endorphic Core, happy as it ever had been. A sudden gust of wind caused the Core to totter and then fall to the ground, dislodging its passenger in its fall.
The feeling of continuity and thought returning to the world was like someone exhaling after holding his breath for two years. Hector’s eyes opened. He perceived (“he perceived” here being distinct from “there was”) a woman standing before him. She was naked, very pregnant, and nibbling about the edges of an apple, smiling as though savoring both the fruit and its implications. She noticed Hector looking at her. ”Hello, Hector,” she said. ”Do you know who I am?”
Hector nodded, his face gradually becoming distinct from the tree behind him. “You’re Eve,” he said. “Everyone’s mom. The first woman.”
”My husband used to call me the platonic form of femininity,” giggled Eve. ”He was better with women than you are, of course. ‘Women’ was his idea to begin with, you understand.”
Hector found that he did understand. “How long have I been—Helen!” He dislodged an arm from the wood around him and put it forth as though grabbing at something just out of reach.
”If you’re looking to get the girl back, you’re barking up the wrong tree,” said Eve. ”This is the other one. The Tree of Knowledge. You created it as a defense mechanism to keep you alive and hold your memories in place until you were in a position to get them back.”
Hector nodded absently. “I forgot.”
”You have a whole world inside of you, Hector. You have the power to never forget. What never forgets, Hector?”
Hector pulled a foot out from under a root. “Is this a riddle?” he asked.
”What never forgets? Here, try an apple.” Eve tossed her fruit at Hector. Hector looked at it for a moment as though it were a bomb, then bit into it.
He knew the answer immediately. “An elephant. An elephant never forgets. But… a goldfish only has seven seconds of memory. In a sane world I would have learned these things in second grade.”
”The sane world, like I said, is inside of you. But it’s not doing anyone much good here. You need to bring it home and let it out. If you can make things green again, eventually you can track down your own Tree of Life and bring her back. But to do that, you need to get home, Hector. And to get home, you need to win.”
By the time the words broached the distance from the woman’s mouth to Hector’s ears, Eve was already gone. Hector took another bite from the apple, and suddenly found his eyes drawn to the little blob lying in the grass not ten feet away.