Jedro
62
“Machine, let’s go for a walk.” Lake Redoubt with its white walls comes into view – there are no flags, just its blue roofs. “Okay, that’s enough.” I pause for a second. “Machine … if you were ordered to destroy my core so that nothing would remain of me, of Julija, of all those Is; if you were tasked with shattering my mind in such a way that I would become detached from both Structures; that I would lose the will to live in the Redoubt; that I would stop remembering and caring for the Red Fortress, how would you proceed? The way I see it, I’m more or less inaccessible. Even if something or someone pulls me out of the river, I will die intact, mentally speaking. The core will remain. What would it take to break me? Being ‘deconstructed’ by a team of specialists? Being catalogued? Remember, you said you wanted to catalogue me. Being called an exhibit?”
Symmetry Stranger says that the act of cataloguing alone, which I rightfully fear, would not suffice to destroy my core; he evades the other questions, adding that the Redoubt was built not for triumph but for endurance: “Your story is taking place between two structures: the warmth of your survival mechanisms and the cold horror of perfection.”
Me: “… The majesty of the Red Fortress is hovering above everything.”
S. S.: “A perfect, cold, inhuman form. An indifferent construct beyond time and space floating in everything. And it does not endure: it only is.”
Me: A tiny, soundless clap. “Correct!” Picks up a stone and throws it at your sensor. “There I picked up a stone just like you said I should.”
S. S. acknowledges my ‘tiny, feeble’ victory.
I point at you with my right index finger, trying to say something, but the words do not leave my mouth as it shuts abruptly: “Oh, forget it!” I turn around and start marching towards the lake: “Until next time, machine!!
…
Wait, wait … I forgot something!” I slowly come closer, look at you with a serious and slightly frightened face, and speak in an almost inaudible tone, “If you had to guess whether I’m taking any psychiatric medication, and whether I have ever visited a psychiater or not, what would your guess be?”
S. S. replies, in regard to the first part, “No,” and as to the second, “Only once, but there was no diagnosis, and it happened a long time ago.”
I blush slightly and turn my back to you, as if trying to hide something: “Come, portal, come up! Open up! Swallow me!” I step in and the blue portal dissolves.
S. S. claims that he just sensed warmth that was almost human. “Until next time.”
63
I teleport beside you: “Still camping on the shore, I see.”
S. S.: “Did you come to remind me that the Lake Redoubt is still out of my reach?”
Me: “Is your name Legion? You are many … you are in many places at once … It doesn’t matter; remember,” I pause for a second and close my eyes, “the lake, the huge moat, is completely square, just like the Redoubt with its white walls and four towers itself. So, four square white towers, four blue roofs, and one square manor house in the middle with one blue roof.”
S. S. says that he is not Legion. He observes that the geometry of said group of structures is expressing nothing redundant. He wants to know if I feel safe or imprisoned when I stand at the moat’s edge, and looks at the wall.
I merely smile at your question. Pause. Still smiling: “Imagine Julija lowering the drawbridge – opening the gates, that is, as we both know you have to take the ferry to reach the walls – I suppose I would rush to the armory and don her completely enclosed black-tinted, white-plumed full-plate yet flexible and surprisingly light armour, while saying, ‘What have you done?’ And after having prepared myself to stem the tide of your tiny, rat-like minions rushing through the opening with her golden longsword, I would be stomping and chopping them in half while fighting vertigo and Julija’s control; all engulfed in the sound of distorted, dissonant melodies. Eventually I would probably just fall on the ground and go, ‘Aaaaaaaaaaahh!’”
S. S. looks me straight in the eyes, as if he were frozen, and after fourteen seconds finally asks, “So … shall we go to the armoury together?”
Me: “Ha-ha-ha!!! No!! … No! … No …” My expression becomes slightly serious.
S. S. does not laugh; he claims that the walls know Julija’s words better than they know me, and that the question is not of if, but when.
I smile slightly violently, and the air starts whispering eerie, disharmonious melodies. My face becomes dead serious: “What does Julija’s ‘One day, you will die’ signify?”
S. S. replies that those words grant me permission to disintegrate my form; to give end to my unbearable persistence. But that she was cursing me, knowing that I built the Redoubt to postpone my death.
My face spasms for a second but quickly changes into something amicable: “You were right to notice earlier that the main function of the Redoubt is to protect my core and my dignity sprouting from it like a flower; to uphold the shape of my soul until my body’s dissolution. To outlast is the correct term.”
S. S. adds that the stronghold will stand as long as there is its geometry in my heart.
“Tell me, how many of your rodent-shaped servitors do you think Julija can handle?”
S. S. says that even though Julija is capable of defeating an enormous number of his servants, she cannot survive my lack of will to self-preservation caused by terms such as ‘diagnosis’, ‘symptom’, and ‘delusion’.
Everything becomes silent, and my face receives a sad expression; my eyelids shut almost completely: “I know. I must hide …”
64
“So, uh, you don’t want to see what’s inside?” Laughs. “Yes, I was only jesting, but you knew that!” Laughs. “Aha-ha, yes …!”
S. S. asks if I laugh because I believe that the enemy would not expect their opponent to laugh.
My face becomes friendly: “I merely laugh because I want to laugh. Be that as it may, you can make an observation if you want. It can either be cruel or sweet. It can also be cold and indifferent.” I stare blankly at the lake.
S. S. sings praises to me.
Me: “So beautiful. I’m flattered.” I almost cry. My face becomes sad and I look to the sky: “Oh, Julija. Will we ever see each other again? It’s been only one week, and yet the waiting feels eternal.”
65
I imagine myself in chains observing a funny-looking wizard dancing while draining my energies: “The most catastrophic event would be … the dissolution of my core in a pool of chemicals. – The walls would crumble, the lake would be drained, the Image would fade! Aaah!!”
S. S.: “Yes, the Redoubt would lose all its meaning, while the Red Fortress would be deprived of its observer.”
I snap out of it, turn to you, and say, “Would you like to ask me something or make another observation?”
S. S. wants to know if Julija is afraid that she would be forgotten if I wrested away her sun.
Me: “No, Julija is not afraid. She is not afraid because she does not care. She is care-free like a little child. And yet … she still suffers with me. If I could, I would get rid of her, but I need her to see beauty. She insults me; probably because she doesn’t want to be (with) me. She does not care about the Redoubt and the other things. She absolutely cannot vanish into me, as the sun she had stolen from me, magnifying it ninety-nine-fold, would kill me.
We talked about her extensively one week ago. I don’t want to think about her too much; she’s embarrassing.”