%title RJ Brewster --- 2112
:writing:novel:chapter:fiction:scifi:post-self:qoheleth:

Home was unlocked.

AwDae wasn't terribly surprised. Although the front door had always been locked when growing up, the fact that this whole sim seemed oriented around clues meant of course ey'd be able to gain entry places ey knew. Clues, right?

Ey checked the other doors in the complex to test the hypothesis.

All locked.

Despite bracing emself for it, there was still a surge of emotion and memory as AwDae stepped into the entryway of eir old home. Cool tile. Tattered rug. Coat hooks where they they were supposed to be.

No coats. The sense of desertion was overwhelming.

Ey felt as though eir mom could be just around the corner in the kitchen, prowling through the fridge, her boyfriend laid out flat on the couch, snoozing in front of the TV running old science fiction shows. And yet ey knew --- knew on some fundamental level --- that the house was empty.

It was too silent. Silent as school had been.

AwDae shrugged out of the rucksack and set it down in the entryway. It was precisely the space where rucksacks went. It was precisely the space where ey had set eirs countless times growing up. Ey did as ey had always done and paced into the common area, toenails clicking against the tile of the entryway, and then the hardwood floor.

The sensation, that uncanny mix of *home* and *wrong*, quickly grew to overwhelming. The fox sat down on the rug in front of the coffee table. Eir spot. Eir spot, where ey had sat to eat dinner countless times. Eir spot, where ey watched TV, those old sci-fi movies, with eir mom's boyfriend.

It was one thing for the house to be so painfully empty, and another entirely to be here as AwDae, as eir fox-self. Perhaps ey could have held both of those concepts in eir mind were ey to only experience one at a time. The two combined were too much. Ey felt eir breath as short, shallow gasps. Ey felt eir vision constricting. Ey felt eir pulse elevated, no matter how still ey sat. Ey felt all these things happening to em with an increasing sense of detachment. Ey found it hard to concentrate on what ey was even supposed to be.

*Is my pulse raised offline, wherever that is?*

Ey let out a strangled laugh. Perhaps there existed in that space some doctor's befuddled stare at the sudden signs of anxiety showing in their patient.

The laugh turned to sob, stopped quickly.

AwDae leaned forward, stretching eir legs out behind em. Ey laid flat on eir floor, on eir oh-so-familiar rug, bafflingly present in eir bafflingly present home. Laid flat, then rolled over onto eir side. Eir tail lay limp against the short pile of the rug behind em.

*How had this happened? What did I do? Why here? What did I do to deserve this?*

Eir mind was awhirl with questions, and only questions. Ey didn't have answers. No answers inside, none before em, none in the house. Answers were a thing that did not, could not exist here. Answers a thing that happened to other people.

Ey didn't have the mental bandwidth required to do anything other than watch questions swirl. Ey was an observer. Nothing more than a set of eyes with no will, no drive. No urge to move those eyes as ey watched all of the emotion that had been held at bay, held back with the sense of *doing something* over the last day and change. All that emotion surge.

Eir actions had been all wrong. Ey had accepted getting lost with resignation. Ey had leapt at the chance to solve the 'puzzle' of the microphone with something akin to excitement. Ey had found a new set of clothes with a casualness befitting a trip to the thrift store. All this when ey should have been experiencing terror. Doing all these things when ey should have been breaking down into sobs at the fact that ey had been struck with some sort of incurable...what? Incurable disease? Ey was lost.

AwDae noted with increasing dissociation that ey was sobbing now. Eir perspective, that core of emself that spent life reviewing actions and reactions, watched with cool distance as eir body shook with gasps and tears streaked down over eir cheeks and muzzle, leaving tracks in the short fur. Whatever part emself was in charge of releasing those pent up emotions had been divorced from the part of emself responsible for actually feeling them. *See? **This** is happening now.*

*It's the emptiness,* that part of em thought. *This place was home, and the knowledge of being permanently removed from such a thing, from anything home-shaped or any sense of belonging, has led to this. There's no one here, and no one at school.*

The heaving gasps for air began to slow, and ey wiped eir tears away in a smooth, slicking motion that flattened eir tall ears against eir head.

Struggling to bring those two parts of emself into alignment once more, AwDae levered emself up heavily. Ey leaned on one paw while the other straightened the fur of eir face, brushing the last aftershocks of that non-sadness away in a careful, calculated gesture. Intentional. A setting-aside of emotion.

Perhaps eir initial reaction had been wrong on the emotional side, but correct on the intellectual. Ey would have to at least figure out why. There would be no sharing it, no telling others, no end game other than the knowledge of a task complete.

It was the only thing left here in this null space that had any meaning.