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<title>Zk | Scientist, Subject</title>
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<h1>Zk | Scientist, Subject</h1>
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<p>Motes paced the streets of which town she was not sure. Less bougie than Sinder, to be sure, though far more advanced than Klengvale. Roads paved in asphalt, yes, just as they were in Sinder, but also full of potholes and chip-seal. Houses lining the road, to be sure, but darker, older, more in need of new payment and new roofs.</p>
<p>Motes had walked the streets of every town she could think of, and learned more than a little about the lay of the land. </p>
<p>For the most part, the Rift was a patchwork quilt of realities, but they were all bound to a certain space. For the most part, every door led to a single other room. For the most part, if a map of the land lay on a table, it would lay flat, with precious few bends, folds, or creases. It was a sensible place. A knowable place. She could learn it like the back of her paw if she but paced its dozens of hundreds of streets. </p>
<p>This, however, was not her goal. </p>
<p>Motes walked these streets because she knew there was a bar there — granted, one she had only ever been to as Big Motes — and she was tired, and she was hoping only that she would be seen somewhere along the way. She knew she had a shadow, somewhere in this quilt of worlds. She just wanted it to find its way here, now. </p>
<p>But there had so far been nothing.</p>
<p>This was a test. It was a test and Motes knew it, for she was both subject and scientist. She was the one studying and the one studied. She walked the world in the hopes of being seen by the test&rsquo;s other subject and scientist, her shadow, and they each watched themselves, took note in changes. How was she feeling now? And now? How about now? </p>
<p>At first, there had been terror and excitement in equal measure. They were two sides of the same coin, after all: expectations amped up with adrenaline.</p>
<p>There was terror because Motes — this Motes — knew what lay in the future for her. There would be pain, yes, and if she were unlucky, enough time to quit. </p>
<p>If she were unlucky, if she were not at the top of her game&hellip;well, no one knew. Not even In The Wind, who knew more about this stuff than just about anyone, knew what lay in store for a cladist whose body died in the Rift without them merging back down. Would they still be able to quit with some glimmer of consciousness? Or would they haunt the dreaming world, here, their spirit unalive, yet unable to die?</p>
<p>And there was excitement because this was her game. This was her play. This was the way in which she dove ever deeper into knowing her true self. She had ever done so, sys-side (much to Beholden&rsquo;s chatting), but this unknowable fact here kept her from digging too much into those same feelings. <em>No one,</em> she had heard nearly all of her cocladists say, <em>wants to bury a body. No one wants to bury a child.</em> She loved them all too much to put them through that. </p>
<p>But as the days dragged on, the excitement waned and the terror lifted. There was a brief phase of curiosity, of wonderment and exploration, but even this failed, and now she was just tired.</p>
<p>The streets on the way to Ace&rsquo;s were as empty as ever. The world in which the bar was embedded seem to have slipped unnoticed into the tapestry of the Rift, by both the Rift <em>and</em> its own inhabitants. It was empty, as though it had been forgotten about while its occupants had merely drifted on with their lives elsewhere. Sodium lamps shone on silent streets.</p>
<p>Whispered voices called it dangerous. Braver ones said out loud that it was seedy.</p>
<p>Motes was not sure that she saw such in the tired old homes on their tired old streets. She saw just that: homes. Homes that had been loved for years and decades — loved to pieces in some cases — sitting on streets that has seen millions of tires roll over their surfaces, which had seen sneakers and paw pads and skateboards and rollerblades and wheelchairs. She saw neighborhoods that had seen life and were proud to show it.</p>
<p>These were the thoughts that filled her head when at last her shadow found her. Thoughts of home. </p>
<p>There was a rustle of noise behind her. Some part of her knew it had to be her shadow. Who else would find her here on these empty streets? </p>
<p>Excitement spiked.</p>
<p>Terror spiked.</p>
<p>Wonder and curiosity and exploration spiked.</p>
<p>And the, before she could even turn to meet her shadow, a weight slammed into her back, and a sharp, blinding pain shot through her chest. </p>
<p>Her breath was forced out of her in a single puff, leaving her lungs emptier than she had ever felt them before. Air was gone from her, it felt. It felt as though she would never breathe again. </p>
<p>All the same, as though to preempt her crying out, a paw reached over her shoulder and clamped down painfully tight on her snout.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Hush now,&rdquo; a voice whispered soothingly against her cheek, warm breath tickling fur where it bunched up against her assailant&rsquo;s fingers. &ldquo;Just be quiet. Just settle down. I have you. I am with you.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The quiet litany continued, even as the knife that had skewered her was jerked forcibly to the side, an attempt to slash within.</p>
<p>Finding this more difficult than not, the knife was pulled swiftly free and, as her body began to crumple, the paw on Motes&rsquo;s muzzle spun her around. She hit the ground, and immediately her shadow was on her, straddling her belly.</p>
<p>Still holding her muzzle shut — awkwardly, given the spin, with forearm crossing her face — her shadow flipped the switchblade knife around in their paw and drove it into her once more, this time down through the heart.</p>
<p>Pain, at some point, loses all meaning. It becomes an abstraction. It becomes a painting. It becomes a landscape. It becomes dry grasses and only the barest hint of hills. It becomes a featureless black shape hovering over the distant horizon. </p>
<p>Her heart struggled to beat, pumping and fluttering erratically, even though such effort only lost the little skunk yet more blood, first from her back and then, once the knife was once more withdrawn and waved away, from her front. </p>
<p>Her shadow let up the grip on her snout, instead using that paw to brush mane away from panicked eyes. </p>
<p>Her own face started back down into hers. Her scientist, her subject let her see her eyes, that same brown, watching on with childish curiosity and a smile that dove squarely into &lsquo;loving&rsquo; territory. A seven year old skunk straddled a seven year skunk to watch her die.</p>
<p>They both watched each other. They stared into each other&rsquo;s faces, one murmuring quiet I-love-yous while the other fell into agonal breathing and the panicked scrabbling of bloody paws.</p>
<p>Her subject, her scientist leaned down and pressed nose-pad to nose-pad. &ldquo;Quit, Motes. It is time. Now, before it is too late. </p>
<p>She could barely hear the words through the rush of static through her ears, could barely see her down-tree instance for the cloud of black spots that was her vision, but it was reminder enough.</p>
<p>The terror within, the fear of death, the fear of a life lost too soon, before it even had truly begun, the fear of never seeing her ma again, the fear of the anguish that would show on Bee&rsquo;s face, it was all enough to give her that last bit of energy to escape in a way that only a cladist knew how. </p>
<p>She quit. </p>
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<p>Motes knelt on the sidewalk awkwardly as the bulk of her up-tree instance simply ceased to exist beneath her. </p>
<p>Thankfully — and this they had tested, realizing it took just a little bit of extra intent — the blood disappeared too. These quiet streets, these empty streets, did not need the blood of an exsanguinating child staining them. </p>
<p>The memories were there. The whole of the last week was ready for merge, sitting on her tongue like a bittersweet sugar cube. </p>
<p>She picked herself up and slipped back into the shadows between two houses, her hiding spot, and pulled a gag out of her pocket to stuff between her teeth. </p>
<p>Now. </p>
<p>The week was there. Not quite in as much detail as she would have liked, and certainly not as much as she remembered from sys-side, but it was there. </p>
<p>It washed down over her, crashing through her ears, blanketing her shoulders, robbing her breath and twisting her gut. There was the excitement and terror. There was the wonder and exploration. There was the boredom. </p>
<p>And there was the terror again, the gut-wrenching terror that came with the first stab of the knife. </p>
<p>She was glad for the gag, as well as the baffling of her paws, as she shrieked at remembered agony. Tears coursed down her cheeks and her breathing came in shallow little sips as the memories of that hot-wire pain piecing her from stem to stem became her entire world. Anguish filled her mind as the memories of terror, of what it might feel like to never again see ma, to destroy Bee so thoroughly, to never grow up clattered raucously against her memories of whispering comforting words and exhortations to quit. Despair at memories of seeing the life drain from her own eyes slammed against memories of vision fading.</p>
<p>She sat there for nearly an hour, just processing and thinking, just wondering curiously as she explored these dichotomies, as she struggled with the new intensity of the fear of death — titillating and alluring as it remained — here in the Rift.</p>
<p>Then, slowly, she pushed herself to her feet, liked up to the sodium fogged night, and forked herself presentable. She had a drink awaiting her. A meal. A bar — quiet but for Ace or the gruff moose, neither of whom would hopefully ask too many questions when a seven year old ordered a tequila shot. Kitsch on the walls, the clack of balls from the pool table, the scent of so much beer and so much love and so much loneliness. </p>
<p>She continued the journey of her scientist, her subject, in a slow trudge down the street.</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2024-10-03</p>
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