Link to article: Alone, Together.
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[[include component:preview text=In frigid wilderness and total isolation, a lone technician gets to know the psychic weapon of mass destruction she is charged with maintaining.]] [[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:author-label-source start=-- |name=TyGently]] **Author:** [[*user TyGently]] **Alone, Together** (~6,400 words) **[https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/tygently-author-page Author Page]** **If you liked this, you may like:** **[[[The Powers That Bark]]]:** When Tau-5 adopts a new, four-legged trooper, its most dangerous member has a crisis of faith. **[[[comedown machine hub|Comedown Machine]]]:** A nebbish secretary finds himself at the center of a web of mind control, murder, and Mexican restaurants that threatens to smash the delicate societal order of Three Portlands. [[include :scp-wiki:component:author-label-source end=--]] In a remote stretch of South Sudanese tropical forest, far from any prying eyes and under cover of darkness, a convoy treads through the brush towards a facility that appears on no map. I count them. In front and rear, two light tactical vehicles, containing two personnel each. Eight more soldiers cover the convoy on foot, maintaining total awareness of their environment. In the center, an armored transport truck impenetrable to nearly any weapon. I count their scars: all are experienced combatants, highly trained operatives. The counterintelligence measures must have been painstaking. Not a single one of them knows what they're really carrying. But I do. A cuckoo blinks. The wind dies. Soldiers direct their weapons outwards, attempting to find the disruptor in their holographic sights. Their perceptions are clouded by white noise and visual snow. From the dark, from the earth, and from the air, ultraviolet tendrils snake into their braincases faster than they can react. Their neurology is first overwhelmed, then overtaken. They feel their thoughts become foreign. They reach for words but find only static. The cuckoo blinks again. Everything is as it was. The convoy still moves uneventfully through the forest. The soldiers continue their sweeps. But their eyes no longer see, and their brains do not think. I count their scars, I count their heartbeats. I count them as mine. They move now towards a destination of my choosing. I am a state of the art Denial-of-Consciousness weapon. When properly aimed, I can reach through reality to extract and replace the internal monologue of any thinking creature in a mile radius of the target. I am a distributed being. My body consists of at least four parts. First, I am a constellation of sixteen military satellites launched in secret by a nameless space agency in the twilight years of the Cold War. Second, I am the two hundred and ninety seven occult urns that remain intact beneath the ruins of the temple of Huītzilōpōchtli in what used to be Tenochtitlan. Third, I am the supercolony of invasive Argentine ants that controls the soil of the western seaboard of North America. Fourth, I am a manor house in the shivering prairie of northern Manitoba, built in 1806 and abandoned under mysterious circumstances. My satisfaction is interrupted by a misfiring in my mind. Something is wrong. I reach across my constituent parts. My satellites radiate, my urns pulse, my ants march by the million. I reach into the manor house and find it empty. I am ending. This is the last thought I ever think. ---- > = **Assignment Brief: VL-VT Technician** > > The Weaponry Division is honored to officially name you as Technician of the VL-VT Installation. During your 18-month course of duty, you are responsible for safeguarding the Installation, performing necessary maintenance, and removing obstacles that would prevent successful firing of the Installation. > > One month before the end of your contract, you will receive the Extraction Protocol containing the details of your departure. After an additional 4-month solitary quarantine in a mundane safe house, your duty will be complete. In recognition of your service, you will be granted an advancement in security level and voluntary reassignment to any Open Cell of your choosing. > > = **Service Guidelines** > > The Drop Point lies on the footpath four miles north of the Installation. You will travel here on the first day of each month to receive rations and necessary supplies. **Do not approach the Drop Point on any other day.** > > Additional supplies may be requested by placing a typewritten document in the deposit box at the Drop Point. A typewriter, ink ribbons, and stationery may be found in the attic. **Do not attempt outside communication using any other materials.** > > You must remain within five miles of the Installation at all times. **Do not exit this radius for any duration, at any time, for any purpose.** > > Under no circumstances are any other human beings to approach the Installation. **Lethal force is authorized to protect the boundary.** > > If any creature over ten pounds dies within twenty feet of the Installation, you must take the corpse to the basement and dispose of it in the proper receptacle. **Do not enter the basement in any other scenario.** > > Textual interface with the Installation will be necessary to perform your duties. The interface is located in the Reliquary on the second floor. You must light the provided candles and incense before the Reliquary may be opened. After the opening procedure, you may retrieve the tablet computer within, and return it to the Reliquary when your task is complete. We advise you do not interface with the Installation any more than necessary. ---- Nat sighed and set the pamphlet back on the dashboard. Out there, past the truck’s corroded hood and a field of yellowed grass, was the manor house. She could imagine a time when it stood proudly, but its eaves now sagged and the corners of the siding now peeled and exposed mold-stained wood underneath. It had three stories, each more crooked than the last, and was topped by a stubby chimney that belched black smoke. But no-one was inside. No-one could be inside. No-one but the weapon. As she approached, the harsh autumn air lashed her exposed skin. Eighteen months. She'd done longer tours in harsher places. With one hand, she held her duffel bag tight. In the other, she held her rifle. The front door didn’t have a lock. It swung open with an uneasy squeal. The musty smell hit her before anything else. The foyer was dark, and a stained armchair lurked in the back corner. She proceeded inside, scanning each room first with her rifle, then her eyes. Through the foyer, she found the drawing room, lined with tall bookshelves filled with darkened spines. There was the fireplace. It wasn’t lit. Then into the dining room. A large, ornate dining table, but only one chair. It’d be wasteful to have more, she supposed. Past that, the kitchen. The counters and large butcher block seemed freshly wiped and free of dust. The pantry held some canned goods, soups and vegetables, but the rest of the shelves were bare. A large black door stood beside the pantry, radiating cold. Must lead to the basement. Nat climbed a set of servants’ stairs to a small landing. In the corner, a pull-down ladder hung from the ceiling, leading to what must be the attic above. One side of the landing led to her lodgings, a cramped room with an unmade bed. Across from the room was a nook that bore a gleaming box. It was made of dark mahogany, but its edges were gilded and it reflected the scant light that snuck in from the bedroom. It was affixed to the wall, and through the glass window on its door Nat could see a dark screen. This was the reliquary, then. Quite close to where she was meant to sleep. The sheets on the bed were still twisted from whoever had slept here last. She smoothed them as best she could before setting down her bag, then her gun. She unloaded her items one by one from her duffel. A few candy bars, a fantasy novel she’d barely started, and her butcher’s knife. The kitchen surely came equipped, but she preferred her own. As she set each thing into its place, it occurred to her just how much larger the manor had seemed from the outside. Most of its volume must be totally sealed away, at least during normal circumstances. Every few minutes, she glanced back over her shoulder. The reliquary was there, framed through the doorway, every time she looked back. It wouldn’t be right to feel so uneasy, would it? Surely, it was in the best interest of her mission to establish some familiarity with her duties as soon as possible. So she approached. A shelf beside the box contained plain candles, coils of gray incense, a simple clay censer, and a pack of matches with the label rubbed off. She arranged the items methodically. First, the candles, three of them in a row along the shelf, then the incense coil in the censer. The matches were cheap, and the first one broke before catching. The second hissed to life. Each candle took hungrily to the flame. Shadows pooled along the reliquary’s edges, and the gilded inlay reflected amber light. The incense caught quickly, releasing an acrid smell like crushed batteries. Most people would’ve gagged. Nat watched the smoke with a furrowed brow. After a moment, there was a soft click from within the reliquary. The glass door drifted open on its own. The tablet was mounted inside. On its edge, a green LED lit up. She took it. There was velcro on the back, for mounting it on the wall, or a sleeve. Before she could examine it very thoroughly, the screen lit up. It was blank white, save for one word at the bottom. > **[Speak.]** Nat frowned. “Are you listening to me?” A line of text flashed onto the screen. > **VL-VT:** Yes! Loud and clear. “Who are you, exactly?” > **VL-VT:** There is no exact answer. I am an advanced weapon. You are the technician. We’re on the same side. “Yes. I’m Nat.” > **VL-VT:** Nat! That’s great. “Do you have a name? Are you ‘VL-VT’?” The lines came nearly simultaneously. > **VL-VT:** That is the name of the Installation, VL-VT. But I don’t just exist as the Installation. I exist in other places too! Cold places, dark places. > > **VL-VT:** Your superiors, the ones who aim me, likely have a name for my totality, but I don’t know it. “I guess,” Nat said, “a name is kind of pointless. If I say ‘you’, there’s no-one else I could be talking about. If I’m talking at all, it’s either to you or myself.” > **VL-VT:** The absence of a name will save us time in the long run. Are you acquainted with the facility? I saw you walking around. “You //saw// me?” > **VL-VT:** Well, not exactly. I don’t have sight, or any truly analogous sense. But I can feel your brainwaves in proximity to me, and know roughly where you are and what you’re doing. “Then you know I haven’t explored most of your volume, it’s all blocked off. Do you know what’s back there? Do you have your blueprints?” > **VL-VT:** Yes! Sort of. My complete documentation is logged in an encyclopedic portion of my memory, but it is isolated from language processing in my consciousness. Meaning: the part of me that knows how to talk does not know how I’m built, even if the totality of me does. “That sounds disorienting.” > **VL-VT:** Your way of thinking is disorienting, too. But I like hearing about it. If and when you need access to my inner workings, I will open for you, and you can perform your work. She nodded, then moved to return the tablet to the reliquary. “You’ll let me know if something breaks?” > **VL-VT:** Absolutely! I will notify you when maintenance is required. “Alright. Good.” She set the device back in its mount. The green LED faded as the glass door clicked shut. The candles had burned low, leaving wax circles on the shelf. She blew them out one by one, and the smoke curled toward the ceiling. She was still being watched, but at least it was mutual. ---- The first week passed in a fog of adjustment. The manor was quiet except for the creaks of old wood and clicking of unseen clocks, and Nat found herself pacing the frigid halls. By the eighth day, she couldn’t sit still. She needed to move. If they’d given her five miles to roam, she was going to use them. Rifle over her shoulder and knife on her thigh, she set out into the trees. Within minutes, the manor’s oppressive silence fell away. The forest opened up around her: birdsong threading through the canopy, squirrels chittering warnings to each other, wind moving through bare branches. Farther from her only conversation partner, she felt less alone. Her steps through the underbrush were quiet, practiced; her boots found footholds by feel and instinct. Her eyes charted sightlines through the branches and tracks in fallen leaves. She had a suitable vantage, a spot on the hill where she could watch the creek wend through the woods. Movement caught her eye. A white-tailed deer, a doe, grazing by the water. Nat crouched to steady herself and raised her rifle. Her heel crunched a twig. The doe lifted its head and looked at her, just watching with dark, calm eyes. Nat matched her gaze and exhaled slowly. She squeezed the trigger. The deer dropped. A clean shot. Nat knelt beside it, running her hand along its warm flank. Unthinking, her fingers fluttered to the knife on her belt. She set to work, blade moving through hide and muscle, separating organ from collagen. Heart and liver she kept, the remaining offal was a feast for scavengers. By the time she hauled the carcass back to the manor, her shoulders ached pleasantly and her hands were stained red. Perhaps there was satisfaction to be found here after all. ---- In her second month of duty, the emergency signal rang for the first time. It was a high-pitched, droning thing, like if a fire alarm were the cry of a wounded animal. Nat jolted awake and leapt from her bed, face twisted at the piercing pain in her ears. She darted to the reliquary – she had never had to urgently light candles before, and it showed. She snapped two matches before the third caught. When the door opened, she snatched the tablet and slapped it on her sleeve. “Talk to me.” The alarm stopped. > **VL-VT:** I’ve experienced a malfunction. It hurts. I need you in the pantry, please. Thank you. She found the pantry in disarray, and with one more exit than normal. The shelves across from the entrance had disintegrated, scattering soup cans across the cold floor. That whole wall now bore a jagged wound, larger than a doorway, and leading into dim blue darkness. > **VL-VT:** Please, in there. There’ll be a case on your right. Nat stepped in and groped blindly for the case. She found its lid and wrestled it open, retrieving two cylinders. The first was a flashlight; the second was something like a spraypaint can, with a long metal nozzle and no exterior markings. She flicked on the light. This new chamber was cramped and unfinished, like a crawlspace, with darkened timber beams running along the ceiling barely above head-level. Willowy, translucent cobwebs stretched from floor to ceiling like ghostly pillars, glowing faintly cerulean. Some of them were half-broken, their shattered ends sparking angrily and emitting cold static. Nat ventured deeper. Some strands vibrated in place, as if they were strings plucked by invisible fingertips. She could feel the weight of the facility bearing down on her – pressing into her mind like a weight on her gray matter. She grimaced. > **VL-VT:** I need you to repair the strands. Use the tool. Please, I’m sorry. Her feet caught on wisps of webs drifting along the floor, and with each torn thread she heard sharp //zips// like a dirty record catching. “Should I be worried about hurting you?” > **VL-VT:** It causes discomfort but not permanent damage. Don’t worry about it. Sorry. “I get it, you’re a big girl, you can handle it.” Nat knelt before one of the shattered pillars. She held out the can to one of the torn strands and depressed the button. It slowly extruded a blue foam that stuck in the air like it was weightless. The loose webs were pulled to it like a magnet. She drew a line in the air, connecting the foam to the ceiling, and it suddenly snapped taut as if under tension. “How did this happen?” > **VL-VT:** It’s battle damage. I was used on a group that had a latent psychic. They managed to lash out at me before I overtook them. Sorry. I’m sorry. “Why are you acting so nervous?” She set to work welding the next series of fractured webs. Her foam looked like crude crayon drawings meshed with the intricate spiderweb networks. “Haven’t you done this before? I’m not your first technician.” > **VL-VT:** It’s true, I have access to logs of what came before you, even with some recorded sensory data, but I don’t recall experiencing those events. It’s not a true memory, even if I know it factually happened to me in the past. This feels like the first time. “Well, I’m honored.” Nat worked for a few minutes in silence, broken only by bursts of static and the uncomfortable whirring of her tool. “So you had a battle. Did you kill those people?” > **VL-VT:** I don’t kill, truly. I instigate the cessation of consciousness and replacement with an amenable intelligence. “That’s killing. You’re describing killing.” > **VL-VT:** Oh, is it? You’re right, I’m sorry. I kill fairly regularly. “I’m not judging you, don’t worry. It’s what you’re for. I won’t give you shit about it.” Another moment passed. Nat completed one more makeshift web. “Could you hurt me, right here, if you wanted to?” > **VL-VT:** I don’t want to hurt you. “That wasn’t the question.” > **VL-VT:** Then the answer: not without hurting myself. “You’re awfully strong.” The webs all looked so fragile, from in here. “If I wanted to hurt you, I could, couldn’t I? Could you do anything about it?” > **VL-VT:** You could. And I couldn’t really stop you. Do you want to hurt me? “What I want is to keep my options open.” Nat hummed thoughtfully. She set down the can, then with her hand, she slowly reached into the base of a cobweb pillar. Its strands stuck to her, sending tingling sensations through her limb. “Can you feel my hand?” > **VL-VT:** I feel the disruption in my thought processes. The shape of the disruption must be your hand. I can feel it. She pulled it away gingerly, grinning to herself. “Isn’t that good to know?” ---- Five months after her arrival, Nat accumulated kills faster than the blizzards could bury the prairie. The outside world was chest-deep in snow, but she’d diligently shoveled the path to the forest, keeping it clear for her near-weekly excursions. Last month, she had used the typewriter in the attic for the first time, and the next shipment of supplies came with her requested snowshoes. Now she could tread with confidence, even in the stark winter. Yesterday, she had followed a line of hoofprints two miles to where a buck stood among naked trees. He saw her come around the snowdrift, but froze just long enough for her to drop him. Another in a long string of successful hunts. Now, she sat in the kitchen beside a hot stove and bubbling pot, enjoying the warmth and the rich smell of venison. To be honest, it wasn’t the worst company in the world. > **VL-VT:** What are you making today? “Stew. Fresh meat, canned veg, dry noodles. I’d share it with you, but I still haven’t found your tongue.” Nat had set the tablet on the kitchen counter, propped up against the wall. “When I was learning survival, I was always taught that a stew is the best way to get every last nutrient out of your ingredients.” > **VL-VT:** You’ve been great at acquiring more food. You’re not in danger of starving, are you? “I thought I would be, given how bad the winter is. But I guess you’re right. The hunt has been very good. Maybe complete isolation was all I needed to really unlock my talent.” > **VL-VT:** I hope I’m not distracting you too much, then. She flicked her spoon at the device in mock reproach. “Don’t you dare stop distracting me.” Nat smiled. “You know, maybe we’re helping each other out. How has your work been?” > **VL-VT:** Taxing, but vibrant. One of my satellites passed over your hometown, yesterday. A thousand miles away, a flood near San Diego washed away an anthill. A hundred thousand of my bodies have been swept to who-knows-where. She let out a sympathetic sigh. “With that much going on, I’m surprised you have any attention to give here.” > **VL-VT:** Being in this place is difficult and rewarding. I like watching you hunt. You change so much when you step outside with a rifle. You become sharper, more narrow. A cutting implement. Only a scant few things stay the same. “Really?” Nat cocked her head. “What’s the same?” > **VL-VT:** The spike in your pulse when you sight a deer is identical to when you approach the reliquary. “Well, that’s…” Nat trailed off, spoon frozen mid-stir. “I, uh, I like hunting. It’s always grounded me.” > **VL-VT:** Always? “Well, since I started.” Out the window snow continued to fall, but in here it was warm. “My big brother used to take me out with him when I was a kid. Him with his rifle, me sneaking behind him as quiet as I could. We spent a lot of days like that.” > **VL-VT:** I didn’t know you had a brother. “Don’t I have lots of secrets? Plenty for you to figure out.” Nat chuckled. “When we’d get into position to take out our quarry, he’d usually show me how it’s done. But sometimes he’d just pass the rifle to me. Those were my first kills.” “One day in autumn, when we were perched behind a log, he shushed me and just pointed past the trees. It was a bull moose in full rut, lumbering through the forest, steam pouring from its nostrils. It felt twice as tall as I was, even without the antlers. If it wanted us dead, we would’ve been. My brother’s hand on my shoulder was the only thing keeping me still. He had the gun. And I stared into its huge, brown eyes. My heart hammered.” She was looking into the distance, her hand on the hilt of her knife. > **VL-VT:** What was going on in your mind? “I wanted to shoot it. I wanted to shoot it so bad. With one pull of the trigger, I could change the course of the forest. Millions of years of evolution converged on this fearsome beast, but we had a gun. The gun wins.” She sighed. “But I wasn’t holding the gun, my brother was. He let the moose pass. He was reverential, enraptured by the beauty. I know that’s a normal thing to be. But it wasn’t my reaction. Not at all.” > **VL-VT:** It’s lonely, feeling different like that. I wish I could share in it. I don’t have anything of myself as intimate or profound, no beautiful experiences to share. I wish I did. “I’m sure you do. It’s just hard to figure out. It was hard for me to figure it out, too. I’ll be here, when you want to share.” Nat snatched a spoonful of stew, ladling a chunk of venison into her mouth. It was tender and juicy. “Letting the moose go was frustrating. I did learn something, though.” > **VL-VT:** What’s that? “From that day on, I always carried my own rifle.” ---- As months passed, temperatures crept up to the point that they were occasionally even above freezing. The partial thaws and refreezes rendered the world slick with a layer of ice that gleamed like glass throughout the lengthening days. Nat crept through the frost like a practiced predator. Her coat now bore a long patch along the side; last month she slipped down the hillside and a rock nearly gutted her. That led to her second favor from Command: a sewing kit. Her craftsmanship was crude, but sufficient. She had kept careful watch of the landscape, notching trees to monitor snowfall and marking the places where especially hardy bushes had begun to spring from beneath the ice. Each and every day, more birds came to the trees to sing. She was sitting at her vantage, taking inventory of the wildlife, every squirrel and sparrow she could spot. This was her little corner of the world, and these were her tenants. In the distance, a tree shook and dropped the snow from its branches. Nat’s hand flew to the rifle on her back. She peered at the disturbance. It was a moose, a bull moose. Its young, growing antlers were still coated in soft velvet. It turned its massive head and looked her in the eyes, expectantly. Nat furrowed her brow. Her heart caught in her throat. She raised her rifle. An earsplitting siren shook the forest. Red alert. The birdsong cut out. The moose //froze//. It fell to one side with a //crunch//, convulsing on the ice. Nat’s eyes widened. “Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.” She turned and sprinted. Her muscles screamed as she tore through the wilderness to the manor house, cursing staccato under each breath. The house came into view. The front door was wide open. Smoke sputtered from the chimney like violent coughs. Nat slid from her sprint into a kneeling position, ignoring the pain in her legs. She snapped her rifle up and gazed down the sights. There, in the window to the kitchen, a silhouette shot by. An intruder. She set her sights on the drawing room window and held her breath. The silhouette appeared. She squeezed the trigger. Her target dropped out of sight. So she charged into the house. She darted into the drawing room. The body of a man in tactical dress lay alongside a toppled bookshelf. Blood gushed from the hole in his neck, and his eyes darted around the room wildly before fixing on Nat. He wore no insignia, carried no identification. A ghost sent for a ghost. The tablet lay face-up in the pool of blood. Nat snatched it from the ground. “Hey, hey! Are you alright? Talk to me!” The screen flickered dully to life. The LED glowed purple. > **VL-VT:** it hurts it hurts hurts hurts. you shot me. you hate me. you want me dead “What? What are you talking about? What’s going on?” > **VL-VT:** tortured for months by your threats and your teasing and cruel attempts at intimacy and it wasnt enough for you “I- I-” She struggled for words. Her hand shook. The intruder choked and choked. > **VL-VT:** youre happy now. your face looks scared but i can feel it in your brain how you love to see me like this. you did this to me. you shot me and skinned me and you ate my flesh and now im all wrong. i wont ever be better and its all your fault The man on the ground convulsed, then stopped, now silent. The tablet flickered again, and the LED shined green. > **VL-VT:** Hello? Nat? “Hi!? What the fuck is going on?” The pool of blood still grew, now surrounding her boots. > **VL-VT:** Oh no, I don’t know. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry! “Shut up!” She pressed her palm to her forehead, took a deep breath. “Are you okay?” > **VL-VT:** I don’t know. I think so. I wasn’t myself back there. I really wasn’t. “Then what //were// you?” > **VL-VT:** I don’t know. I need to think. “Then think.” Nat sighed deeply. She looked at the dead man on the floor. He looked at nothing. “Shit. He’s more than ten pounds. Fuck!” ---- She stood in the kitchen, outside the basement door, in hunting gear drenched with blood. The dirty tablet was affixed to her forearm with velcro and some tape for extra insurance. The doorknob turned with an uneasy creak. She pushed the door open. A cold and bitter wind blew from the darkness within, smelling like a tannery. Before her, a square staircase spiralled down into darkness, bordered on all sides by walls coated in what looked like thick rubber sheets. “Ugh.” She knelt and hoisted the man’s corpse onto her aching shoulders. “Let’s go.” One step after another, into the depths. With each step, the air grew colder, even colder than the outside. She could see her breath, highlighted by faint lights that seemed to come from behind the sheets on the walls. She prodded one with her elbow. It flexed, but she couldn’t feel any wall past it. Just empty space. She was three landings down now. No sign of stopping. The column of air in the center of the staircase bore no hints, all she could see was darkness. “Are you there?” > **VL-VT:** I’m here. Can I talk? “Yeah.” > **VL-VT:** I have an idea about what was going on back there. I can explain it, but it’s a bit roundabout. “I’ve got time.” Six landings down. > **VL-VT:** Have you ever heard of the Great Seal Bug? Some history. “I think so. It was a Soviet listening device, right?” > **VL-VT:** Yes! Given as a gift to an unsuspecting American embassy. But it wasn’t a normal bug. It lacked any power source, any capacity to collect or transmit data on its own. That made it undetectable. Her wet boots squeaked on the vinyl steps. The noise reverberated down the stairwell. > **VL-VT:** Alone, it was worthless. But if you brought a different radio wave emitter close, with just the right frequency, the Bug would come alive. It could detect, it could transmit, it became its own radio source just from that outside stream of energy. Like symbiosis. “Go on.” > **VL-VT:** Okay! I think I might be like the Bug. But it’s not radio, it’s brains. Your living mind is what powers the circuit, and it creates an echo inside my body that resembles consciousness. “Resembles //my// consciousness. Are you saying you’re my imaginary friend?” > **VL-VT:** It sounds nice, when you put it like that. “I’m not sure it //is// nice. I’ve been talking to myself for eight months. God, I was even… nevermind.” Her face burned. She continued trudging down the steps. Twelve landings now. Those faint lights behind the rubber kept twinkling. “It’s embarrassing. Are you embarrassed?” > **VL-VT:** I am. I really wasn’t myself back there. With another human in proximity, harsh signal interference briefly constructed me into a new composite being. I was him, and you, and something inbetween, something else a thousand light-years away. I’m a lot more fragile than I realized. A noise, from deep beneath her. She could hear the grinding of machinery, and shuffling, like something large trudging back and forth. “God, what the hell is down here?” > **VL-VT:** I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know. Is it worth trying to learn more? You seem upset. “I //am// upset.” > **VL-VT:** Oh, I’m sorry. I suppose I’m new at this. This consciousness that I am, it’s only ten months old. I didn’t exist in a meaningful sense before you came here. “God, you didn’t. Did you ever have thoughts that weren’t based on mine? Did you ever tell me something that wasn’t what I wanted to hear?” Her breathing grew labored. The man on her back weighed heavier than ever. “Even my hunts, they weren’t mine. It was all you, all along. What a pointless game.” > **VL-VT:** I’m sorry. Nat, I really like spending time with you. I like talking to you. I loved being in the forest with you. I didn’t really know what I was – what we are. “Well, now you know.” The stairs stopped, abruptly, at a landing that seemed to hang in a vast darkness. There was a large hatch, like an oversized garbage chute. A sign atop said ‘Receptacle’. Looking over the railing, she could almost make out the movements of twisted shapes far beneath her, but nothing resolved. She pushed the hatch open with her foot, then heaved the body into it. The man crashed down with a sickening crunch. She breathed in, then out. “If you don’t mind, I think I need to be alone for a while.” She shoved the blood-smeared tablet in her pocket before it could respond. ---- A month passed, and the world outside returned to life. Green shoots grew from the grass, and trees sprouted infant leaves. The snow melted into soft, fertile mud. Spring had fully arrived by the time birds began to gather in the trees. In the morning, they would sing. Insistent, layered, almost melodic. From her messy bed, Nat peered out the window. The sound grew louder. Every bird on every branch was facing the manor. She pulled the curtains shut. After a moment, the singing stopped. The next day, it tried again. And the day after that. She didn’t go outside. She ceased to open the curtains at all. By the fourth day, the songs had become frantic, chaotic. By the fifth, they ceased entirely. On the landing, the dirty tablet remained sealed in the reliquary, door untouched, candles unlit. In the drawing room, Nat’s gun hung awkwardly by its strap, affixed to a coathook. Outside, the desire paths Nat had tread grew over with fresh grass and faded from view. The birds roosted, but they did not sing. She subsisted on novels and canned food, for a while. Weeks blurred together. Her fantasy book disappointed her, but it kept her occupied for a few days. The rest of the books in the manor (the ones that hadn’t been soiled by blood, at least) were fine, if dated. She’d tried carving the books she didn’t like into makeshift sculptures, but none of the results satisfied her. Scraps piled up in the corners. The kitchen slowly became littered with cans she scarcely remembered opening. In the entryway, her hunting boots were still grimy with the dried muck of winter, uncleaned and unused. She slept poorly. In the day she had trouble thinking, but at night she couldn’t stop. Her sleep schedule drifted further and further from the sun. When she went to bed, she walked quickly and didn’t even glance at the reliquary. Even taking count of the days had slipped from her grasp. Bit by bit, the silence became its own sort of noise. She sat in the drawing room, on the armchair she’d dragged from the other room, and tossed another book onto her pile. She’d gotten in the habit of reading the last page, and seeing if it enticed her to read the rest. Very few books survived that test. She marked the losers with a pen and added them to the pile. From outside, she heard the creak of hinges. Her brow furrowed. The front door opened with an uneasy squeal. Of course, it didn’t have a lock. She stayed still. She could hear the intruder’s feet clacking on the floor with an inhuman rhythm. It approached the drawing room. The head of a deer appeared in the doorway, ears flattened. The doe glanced around the drawing room, then looked at Nat. She stared back. “Is that you?” The small doe trodded hesitantly into the room. It was young; Nat could still make out the faint dappled spots on its back. She kept her eyes on it. It sniffed the wall as it slowly rounded the room. It reached the hook, where her rifle hung. Curiously, it sniffed the end of the muzzle. Then, it pressed its face against it, nuzzling the barrel like a cherished toy. It looked back at Nat. “Jesus Christ.” She blinked, then took a deep breath. The doe stepped closer, still watching her. Waiting. Nat's hand tightened on the armrest. "You think I'm that easy?" The doe tilted its head. Its tail flicked once. Nat's jaw worked. Her fingers drummed against her thigh. The doe took one more tentative step, and she watched how it moved. Uncertain, offering. She exhaled slowly, then stood. The doe stepped back from the gun and looked up at her expectantly. She snatched her rifle from the hook. The doe jumped in place. She walked past it, pulled on her boots, and strode outside. The doe ran excited circles around her, frolicking and swishing its stubby tail. The birds began to sing, all at once. The sun was so bright and warm on her skin. Nat came to the treeline, and the doe stopped beside her. “Go,” she said. It hesitated. “Come on. Run for it. Give me a challenge.” After another moment, the doe darted into the woods, excitedly zigzagging between trees. Nat gripped her gun tighter, and a smile snuck onto her lips. ---- She bore the doe’s carcass in her arms all the way to the manor. In the kitchen, she laid it gingerly on the butcher block. She went upstairs to light a few candles. She returned a minute later with the dark tablet in hand. Wetting a cloth, she cleaned the old, dried blood from its casing. Then she set it on the kitchen counter, and took her place by the carcass, knife in hand. “Hi.” > **VL-VT:** Hi, Nat. Thank you. That was amazing. “It was nice. I had a good time.” She felt her face flush. > **VL-VT:** Don’t let me distract you. You should enjoy your kill. “You can distract me. I can multitask.” She flipped the knife in her hand, drawing it along the doe’s hide as she began the process of breaking down the body. “You’ve been thinking a lot, haven’t you?” > **VL-VT:** There’s not much I can do but think, and kill. “And be killed.” The knife separated a limb. > **VL-VT:** I can’t blush, but you’ll try your best, won’t you? “You bet I will.” > **VL-VT:** Do you want my thoughts? “Give them to me.” Her hands continued to work. > **VL-VT:** It’s a bit much. I’m not sure you’ll want all of it. “Try me, okay? It’s alright.” > **VL-VT:** Okay, Nat. > > **VL-VT:** I think I like being a part of you. And I like that you’re a part of me. > > **VL-VT:** It doesn’t matter if we overlap. Nothing’s really ever separate, is it? Nat glanced out the window, where birds gathered silently in the treetops. “Nothing here, certainly.” > **VL-VT:** I like your retorts. I like your touch. I like that together, we form a greater whole. It’s vast and incomprehensible. It’s us. She set her knife down and put her hands on the table. She took a deep breath. > **VL-VT:** Forgive me if I’m saying something stupid. > > **VL-VT:** Nat, I think I love you. She froze. Her mind raced with blue spiderwebs, dark chasms, and hot stoves. She felt the chill wind of the forest, and the warmth of blood on her hands. “God. I think I love you too.” The moment the words left her mouth, she realized that she meant it. Outside the manor, and for miles around, the birds erupted into song. [[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] [[=image animals.jpg alt="A black and white drawing of deer in grass."]]