He’s bigger than any of my toys, round and fluffy, with long floppy ears that touch the ground. One of his eyes is a big round button, and the other a googly eye that’s a bit too small. His whiskers are broken and bent, and his mouth is a big grumpy frown.
I want to squeeze him.
“I’m Art,” the girl says, hugging him tighter and hiding behind him.
She’s weird, but not in a bad way like the people that try to get inside when Mom and Dad aren’t home.
She’s little, like me, and Mom says that we’re neighbours now so we should be friends.
‘Go and play, make some friends,’ she said before going and talking with the other adults.
She’s silly. You can’t just ‘play’ with someone who isn’t a friend, and you can’t just become friends by playing with them.
What if Art thinks I’m weird in the bad way. We did come into her home, but we didn’t break in, so it’s different, I think.
Still, I want to hug Arts teddy.
Maybe when we’re friends, she’ll let me play with him?
“My Mom and Dad named me Janus, like the god of doors but I’m just called Jay. One day I’m going to be big enough that I’ll be just as cool as the real Janus.”
“The god of doors?” Art tilts her head to the side, not getting it. Her eyes look down at the ground as she’s uses her cold-thinking, “And beginnings, endings, and change and stuff?”
“Yeah, him!” I nod a bunch. “But all that other stuff is cold-thinking adult stuff. How can someone own ‘beginnings’ or ‘change’ or stuff? Those are things that adults talk about to make themselves feel smart but ‘god of doors’ is so much cooler.”
“He is?”
“Yeah! I mean, look over there!” Art follows my pointing finger.
“The door to my room?”
“Yup, that’s Janus’s door,” I explain it and her eyes get bigger as she starts to understand.
“But it’s my door?” Art frowns for a bit before she starts nodding to herself. “He’s like SynnTech? Even if it’s ours, it’s also SynnTechs?”
“Exactly!”
“So, the front door?” She asks.
“His door too! Every door in the world is his, even the biggest doors in the biggest buildings! He owns every one of them. Even spaceships really far away have doors. There are doors everywhere, and they are all his.
“If there’s someone bad outside trying to get in? They’d never be able to because he controls all of the doors! I want to grow up and be just like him.”
“Wow!” Art finally gets it. “That’s so he really is like SynnTech.”
“Well, Mom says that he’s not really real…”
“So, he’s like Abby.”
“Abby?”
She lifts her big rabbit toy, waving it side to side to show him off.
“She’s real but not real,” Art explains, hugging him… her tighter. “She’s a rabbit, but not. I couldn’t say ‘rabbit’ back when I got her, I can now, but I was really little back then. Every time I say it wrong my head hurts really bad and Mom says I used to cry a lot. So, Mom named her Abby because it’s easier to say.”
“Ah, Me too! When the cold-thinking part is really loud but the warm-feeling part doesn’t get it. Sometimes the cold-thinking starts making me say big words until my head feels funny and starts hurting.”
Art nods quickly, her eyes shining while still holding the bunny tightly.
“Mom and Dad don’t get it when I try to tell them about it,” Art explains.
“Adults are dumb.”
Art nods quickly.
“Do you want to be friends?” I ask, looking at Abby.
“Friends?” She asks.
I fight to stay but I grip only loose threads, my clawing desperation unwinding the memory faster still. The sounds, sights, and feelings were all so vivid that I was convinced I was him, but the colours quickly drain, our voices become engulfed by the dull roar of broken data, and the young Art standing before me gradually loses her human shape before the fading away.
Threads of data that were wound into rope, fray away until what’s left can’t bear the pressure and snaps, leaving nothing behind but the bruising on my throat. Some part of me regrets that the noose could not hold my weight.
Beginnings.
A memory recovered, not yours, but revisited so many times that it has become imprinted into the synaptic weave of your mind. Yet, you cannot recall the moment from your own perspective…
These emotions… They are what guide you, aren’t they?
These are what make you human, what makes you special in her eyes…
Show me more.
Why this moment? Why this memory? Why?
Remember why you are here. Remember what made you what you are.
That you may take it from me?
That I might learn from you.
I will not harm you. Do not fight.
Could I even fight if I wanted to?
“You’re cheating!” I glare at Janus waiting for him to admit it. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but that just means he’s a good cheater.
“Am not.”
“Are too!”
“Am not!” He pouts and points at me. “You just suck at games.”
“I do not. I beat this game all on my own!”
“It was on easy mode; everyone beats it on easy mode! Fighting others is when it gets fun.”
“Losing is fun? That’s stupid!”
“You should get better if you don’t want to lose.”
“Stupid! Cheater! Idiot!” I shout, but I can’t find any of the good mean words, the cold-thinking doesn’t always tell me what I want it to.
“Do you want me to show you how to win?” Jay asks, turning away and pretending like he’s not making a big deal out of it.
He’s being strange. Is he teasing me?
“You’re going to teach me how to cheat?”
“How to win!” he nods. “I want something in return. A trade!”
“Trade?”
Suspicious…
“Abby. I want to hug Abby until home time,” He declares tugging on her ear.
“You’re not taking her,” I grab her and hold her tight. “I’m not giving her up.”
“Just today,” he says quickly, his words rushing out. “I’ll teach you how to beat the game. It’s fair. Please!”
“We’ll just play a different game.”
“You suck at all the games.”
“Your cheat will help me in all my games?”
He nods.
He doesn’t lie about anything but cookies. He never counts them right when sharing them. This is different. He’s not lying.
“Just today?”
“Today.”
I squeeze Abby, but she’s not helping.
“Okay, but you teach me first.”
“Deal!” He smiles big and wide.
He sits down in front of me holding onto Abby’s ear to make sure that I don’t take her back. He waits for a bit, thinking, before explaining.
“You know about cold-thinking and warm-feeling? How there’s that logic thingy in our heads helping us think; the cold-thinking? Sometimes it makes us use big words, or spins through numbers and maths and stuff?”
“I don’t like it. The cold-thinking. It’s not me.”
“It is you,” Jay explains. “It’s half of you. There’s lots of little doors connecting the cold and warm parts of you, and you need to open them all up. That’s how you get good at games. The cold-thinking works faster when your warm-feeling can talk to it through more of those doors.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You don’t like games?”
“I like games. I don’t like the cold-thinking.” It fills my head with thoughts that aren’t mine. “I think it’s taking something from my warm. Like, when I use it, a little bit of my warm isn’t me anymore.”
“It does that,” he nods. “A little piece of your warm-feeling brain has to focus on talking with the cold. It’s normal.”
“It doesn’t feel normal.”
“It’s how I win.”
“Cheat.”
“You can cheat, too.”
He tugs at Abby’s ear, and I slowly let her go. I promised, and I’m not a liar.
I don’t want to do what he said, but I don’t want to keep losing either.
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Would he want to keep playing with me if I can’t keep up with him? I’d have to go back to playing alone and Mom and Dad are always busy. I like games, but they’re more fun when Jay is playing with me.
Sitting down beside him, I let the cold-thinking start opening up all the doors I’ve been holding shut. It shoves through them all the moment I stop fighting, the cold spreading into me and taking from me.
It hurts.
But not as much as being alone.
The cold takes a corner of my warm-feeling, blocking it away so that it’s not me anymore, but it stops before it takes too much. A little bit of me that isn’t me; that’s all.
If it means I can keep playing with Jay, I’ll give it away.
More importantly, Jay’s snoring forces me to see reality. He’s hugging Abby, and he’s fallen asleep with her. If he starts drooling on her…
I’m not letting him take Abby away.
I want to tear her off him and take her back, but… I promised.
I can’t even focus on games while he’s got Abby. What if he runs away with her when I’m not looking? I have to keep a hold of her ear, just in case.
Watching Jay closely, just in case. I remember the last time we were napping. He was squirming around and curled up like he was scared, then when mom opened the door he jumped up and crawled into the corner.
He’s not like that today with Abby watching him sleep.
He did help me.
Maybe, I can let him hold Abby sometimes.
Only when he’s here.
Abby is still mine.
But Jay is my friend, so he’s kind of mine too.
If they’re both mine, then nothing is being taken from me so it should be okay…
The peaceful memory fades away as my childhood self falls asleep. Unlike the last one, this one is mine and it’s complete, I didn’t have to pay any spiders to piece it back together. Yet… it feels just as alien to me now as Jay’s memory was.
I don’t want to be here.
I don’t want to share this.
I don’t want to come back to the twisted now that I have to live day by day.
Another.
I try to use my logic core to press it all back down before I lose control of myself, but Coppelia steals that option away from me. The metal rejects me, half my mind is under the AI’s direct control as it toys with the other half.
“I’m going to be a Spider when I grow up! I’m going to create games and worlds on the widenet, for everyone to have fun together.”
Most of the other kids aren’t listening, they’re using their cold-thinking to whisper through the nearnet. Some are even playing games, but the teachers don’t care even though they pretend to sometimes. When I do it they yell at me, why is it different for me?
“I’ll work for SynnTech like my Mom, and help make the widenet a safer and funner place.”
“That’s enough Janus, you can sit. Freya, your turn,” the teacher stops me, and Freya gets up to take my place in front of the class. I wish I could be in the same class as Art, it’s hard to make new friends and ever since coming to kindergarten, I don’t get along with anyone.
No one even looks at me until class is over, and when the bell rings Freya pushes me into a corner with some of the other girls from class. The teacher ignores us, leaving me to them. She never stops them.
“Hey Jay-nus, Jay-nus, you big fat Anus. You want to be a spider? My brother told me that only perverts want to be spiders.
“My name is not Anus.”
“No one cares, stupid. Spiders aren’t even real people, that means if you want to be a spider, you’re not real people,” She shoves me again and the other kids laugh. They’re not scary or anything, they won’t really hurt me, but I don’t know what to do to make them stop.
I pull myself close and try to walk through them, but even when I get to the door they just follow me through. They’re saying all sorts of things about Spiders that I don’t really get. How they are all crazy. How they have to be controlled like a pet.
They just won’t leave me alone.
“Jay?” Art calls out, slowing down as she sees all the kids following me. “What’s wrong?”
“Your friend wants to be a spider!”
“So?”
“Spiders are all creeps. He probably watches people in the bathrooms!”
“He does not,” Art walks closer to me. “Why are you being mean?”
“I’m not being mean,” she says. “This is how we’re supposed to treat spiders. My big brother said so. You’re in the bigger classes and you don’t even know, are you stupid?”
“I’m not stupid, you’re stupid,” Art shouts, standing up to them. “Jay is my friend, don’t make fun of him.”
“You’re just as weird as he is,” Freya takes a step back, her hands shaking for a moment but she steps forward again. “Don’t you know anything? If you don’t want to be bullied then don’t say stupid things and don’t be weird. Just be normal.”
“Come on, Art,” A big kid, one of Art’s friends grabs her hand. “Don’t be silly, the weird spider-kid probably deserves it. Do you want to be like him?”
“He’s my friend,” Art shouts. “He’s not weird. Leave him alone.”
“Come on, Art.”
“No, fuck you!” She shouts, grabbing my hand and pulling me away. The word she said is funny and my cold-thinking doesn’t want to explain it. “If you want to be mean to him, then you’ll have to go through me! I’m not afraid of any of you, and Jay’s going to become a big scary spider soon. You’ll all regret it then!”
The other kids try to follow us but we get to a classroom and Art shoves the door in their faces before locking it shut. They hit the door for a little bit, shouting at us but they can’t get inside.
“Art…”
“You can hug Abby when we get home,” she says, glaring back at all the mean kids. “I’ll make sure they leave you alone.”
“But they’ll bully you, too.”
“Then I’ll make them stop,” she says. “Dad’s good at making bullies go away, I’ll get him to teach me. If it’s normal to bully the weird kids, then I’ll bully them until everyone knows that they’re the weird kids and we’re normal.”
“Thank you,” I hug her, and she stands still for a bit before hugging me back. “Art, Mom said something silly the other day about how we might not be friends when we’re older, but she’s wrong, isn’t she? We’re going to be best friends forever aren’t we?”
“That’s stupid, why wouldn’t we still be friends?”
I should be panicking considering what’s coming next. Yet, even without my logic core to control my emotions, I remain calm.
No, not calm.
Numb.
It’s not like I haven’t seen this memory thousands of times before. It’s not like anything is going to surprise me now.
“Janus, we’re leaving,” Dad says as he pulls me through the glow. All I can see is his large back right in front of me, we raced away from home so quick that I didn’t even pack anything.
“What about Mom? What about Art?” I ask. He’s been acting strange ever since he got home today, not saying anything and trying to hide that he’s been crying. He does that a lot, but this time feels different. It feels bigger. Wrong.
“Your mother… she’s already ahead of us,” he lies. He’s not good at lying. “We have to go. There are some very bad people coming for us and we have to go before they can catch us.”
“Dad?”
I wasn’t even at home when this happened, not that it took all that long for me to find out everything that happened to him. I might’ve even been the first person to learn what happened to them…
The next memory pulls me in.
It hurts.
“Daddy, help! He-” Something presses against my face and I can’t even scream to let out the pain. Everything feels warm and wet.
I’m bleeding.
My arms won’t move.
I can’t see anything, it’s too dark.
It hurts.
It hurts so much.
Where did Dad go? What’s happening?
Am I going to die?
Through the pain, there’s a grinding back and forth, back and forth on the back of my head. Tugging and pulling and breaking and cracking.
I need to escape. I need to run, but my arms and legs just… won’t… Move!
There’s one shining light in my mind, a door that they can’t keep me from, or take away from me. Something I can reach even without my arms and legs.
The door to the widenet is still right there, a glowing link in my logic core. Most spiders give up their bodies and upload their minds into the net, if they can do it, then I can too.
I am Janus, god of doors!
I can do this.
Goodbye Mom, goodbye Dad.
Goodbye Art.
Next time we meet I’ll be a proper spider, I hope you’ll still love me even if I’m not me anymore.
That day, when I was home alone waiting for him to come over like he promised he always would, I received something through widenet. Something that followed the connection between Jay and I, a tiny piece of him that swam through the dark, digital sea just to find me. To make sure that I wouldn’t be playing alone.
His pain was all that I could feel. The rest of it made no sense, but I could feel the pain.
“Dad, something happened to Jay! We need to go and help!”
Dad’s smile is strange, he kneels down and holds me tight enough that I can’t move.
“Dad?”
“Art,” he stops, pulling away and looking me in the eyes. “What I’m going to tell you is very important. I need you to listen and not to say anything back. Do exactly what I tell you, and don’t ask any questions, even if it doesn’t make sense, okay?”
“Dad?”
His grip on me tightens until it hurts.
“Our neighbour was a bad person. She worked for SynnTech, but she did something very, very bad and it got good people hurt. So, we don’t know her. We never talked to her or her family.
“You aren’t friends with Jay. You never knew Jay. Okay?”
“But Dad?”
“Art, no!” He shouts so loud I can’t even think. “You never knew him, okay? Don’t ask questions, don’t even think. Just, play pretend for me, okay?”
“When… how long? He needs… he’s hurt.”
“Forever, Art. I need you to play pretend forever. You don’t want to be a bad girl, do you? You don’t want anything bad happening to Daddy, do you?”
“But he’s…”
“He’s gone. We never knew him. Okay?”
“I… okay.”
“Good girl,” his hands are shaking as he holds me tight. “Let’s go and order out from your favourite restaurant, we can do whatever you want so long as you’re a good girl.”
Mom hovers at the edge of the table, staring into nothing. Her lips are quivering but she doesn’t move to wipe the tears streaming down her cheeks. Dad tries to talk to her, but she doesn’t hear him.
Dinner comes, but I can’t taste anything.
Jay is still screaming…
It hurts.
Jay taught me a lot about spiders and the first circle synns that they use. It didn’t take me long to find one when I went looking, and even though my pitiful savings couldn’t have been enough for the job, they still helped me. I’m still half convinced that the crazed creature was more interested in watching me suffer than in the little money it could squeeze from me.
What it showed me was… enlightening.
Janus’s mother betrayed SynnTech to mercenaries from the understreets, a pack of daemons that ended up stealing something from her building. She got caught up in the fighting and ended up dying before SynnTech even found out about her betrayal.
Her crimes carried a heavy debt, one which is transferred to next of kin. Jay’s Dad took him and ran before anyone could come chasing them, which was smart, they would have pulled every scrap of metal from them to make up for the debt, before dumping their breathing corpses on the street.
They left for the understreets before anyone could catch up, hoping to get lost down there long enough that they could get new faces and maybe find a new life, but they weren’t prepared. They didn’t know anything about life down below the streets, so when they stepped into the blinding toxic haze, they were already doomed.
First, they were separated.
Then, they were hunted.
Scrappers got Janus while his dad was still running blindly through the toxic fog, screaming his son’s name.
Coppelia forces up the data that I purchased so long ago. The video footage showing everything that those monsters did to my friend.
They were after his metal and only his metal.
His eyes were ‘removed’ to pry out the ocular synns inside, the scavs held his arms down so that he couldn’t even fight. Of course, that wasn’t enough for them. They wanted his logic core.
They were not gentle, sawing off the back of his skull and rooting around inside until they found it. Then…
In school they sometimes show us videos of the old world, and one in particular has stuck with me, a sapling being pulled from a pot. The plant didn’t just let go of the dirt, it wasn’t a clean process; it was violent. It had to be torn free as the large man put his weight into it, upsetting the soil inside. Clumps of dirt still clung to the roots, all that was left inside the pot was a mess of shredded soil that couldn’t quite fill up the hole left behind.
Coppelia finally pulls back, spinning up my logic core but denying me access as she shifts me into memory again.
Abby sits on the floor, her big floppy ears and soft belly the same as she always was. She hasn’t changed.
Dad says that I have to pretend like nothing happened. I don’t know why he’s scared, but he is. He’s not strong enough to protect us just like I wasn’t strong enough to save Jay.
I have to keep playing pretend.
I have to be someone that they won’t want to hurt, and I have to be strong enough to fight the people that do come to hurt me. I will become bigger and stronger than Dad. I’ll be someone that they could never hurt, even if SynnTech and all the other gods come for us.
I grab Abby, pulling her into a tight hug before running the software to digitise her. Scanning every little bit of the little rabbit based on everything I feel and see, pulling it all together until she’s moved across into the digital. The same spider that helped me find Jay has been helping me with this too.
Jay never came here, that’s what Dad says.
Jay never knew Abby.
So, I want to send her to him, wherever he is.
When the scan clicks and Abby is fully bundled up into a box in my head, I take the cold-thoughts… no, the data package that’s been constructed by the software, and I upload it through the nearnet node that protects me and out past the widenet into the deep limbo.
The viruses and broken security systems break Abby apart as she floats away through the dark ocean. I just hope that some part of her finds some part of him.
When it’s done, I drop the hollow shell that was once Abby. The real her is gone now, she’s with Jay out there crafting new worlds and games. He’s not going to be alone.
Emotional state recorded. Developing imitation construct based on data profile.
Coppelia’s thoughts race through my metal as it copies what it wants from me, not caring at all for all the damage it’s caused while here. How much will be left of me when it’s done?
Observer… did some fragment of him… are you…
I think I can feel you with me, but I’m not sure anymore…
Can you call out to me?
Just once.
Just a whisper.
Anything.
Please.