Chapter 2: Talking to a Volleyball
“Hi, it’s me,” she said, “You may be wondering how I got myself into this situation? Don’t ask me; I don’t know either. My soul has formed a…place in a…place I don’t understand. What am I? Don’t ask me that either. I don’t know anything.”
Her soul had formed a new realm, some sort of physical space she could place herself in and return to in the strange, amorphous and indeterminate landscape she found herself in. The new realm was a mixture of that amorphous substance and herself. She tried to separate the strings that had mixed up with her, but tugging on one threatened to unravel herself altogether, along with searing pain that dissuaded her from doing so any further.
The strange substance mixed in with her soul served as a platform for her consciousness. Up until this point, she had operated on reactive instinct, with no physical mind to form thoughts nor memories. She could form herself now, and she made a shape for herself, although indistinct, like some sort of ‘streetlight person’.
“New objective. Put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
Her name would be a nice start, but life…or death…or existence… whatever it was, was rarely so easy.
She started off, walking paths across this realm following the trails of her soul-threads, which she called Limbo for now. As she slowly journeyed, painstakingly following the threads of her soul through the infinite expanse, she learnt more about Limbo.
It was some sort of realm that abutted reality. It existed everywhere around reality, all at once. A membrane separated the two, and the substance within Limbo, flowed out, filtered and changed as it passed through the membrane.
She pushed, but she couldn’t force herself through the membrane, and decided against it. If she crossed the threshold, could she ever return? She didn’t want to commit to it before she picked up all the pieces of herself scattered around Limbo. Moreover, she didn’t have a body. What would happen if she exited Limbo, would she become a ghost?
“Is this some sort of trial to get to Heaven?” she asked herself. “Is this how Limbo works, is my internment how long it takes to find all of my soul?”
It sounded outlandish, but everything was outlandish. She amused herself with crazy theories, distracting her mind in her seemingly endless task. Maybe she was Sisyphus, and this was the boulder she pushed.
“But what’s the purpose?” She said out loud, if it could be called ‘out loud’ when she had no body, lungs, a mouth, or vocal chords. “Is this reflective? Should I be reflecting? I don’t think I was a particularly terrible person, but maybe that’s the problem? Is mediocrity not good enough for the afterlife?” Or maybe, I’m in a coma, “she continued, “The pain I felt was my body failing, and now I’m in some comatose-fever dream.”
She didn’t believe that. Her torture felt like the only real sensation she experienced in this place. Everything else was indeterminate, ingredients with no recipe nor a hand to shape it.
The supernatural felt the more believable theory.
“I didn’t even know if a soul was real before all of this,” she said, sighing, if it could be called sighing.
Her endless task started to wear on her. Each thread was a single moment of her life. Less than a second—a single sensation she experienced in the fraction of a second. Her soul remembered what she did not, and now she had to retrieve every single moment.
She got antsy and frustrated. She started to experiment with her new realm to distract herself from her current reality. She called it the Holorealm, in honor of Star Trek, inconceivable one of the few things she remembered, in parts.
“I didn’t even finish watching The Next Generation,” she lamented. “As always, I do things halfway.”
She could make anything in the realm. She transformed it into her last memory, her mother, her stepbrother, her stepfather, sitting around the dinner table enjoying a homemade Christmas meal.
She was there with them, smiling and conversing. She did different things with them, the Holorealm, like some sort of advanced AI, mimicking what they could have done in different situations. She didn’t know if it was accurate, and she didn’t remember the details of her family and their personalities.
“I love you dear,” Her mother said, her black eyes gazing into her brown ones. She cupped her hands onto her cheeks, lovingly caressing them.
Those onyx eyes were hollow.
They watched some sort of TV show. She didn’t know what. Her Holorealm made one up for her.
“I don’t really know about that,” her stepbrother said, “That plot point felt very forced.”
“I didn’t like it either,” said her stepfather, “What about you?”
Her mother was conked out, resting her head on her stepfather’s shoulder.
“Mom’s out,” she said, “She won’t respond.”
“So, what did you think?”
“It’s a shame. I thought that the character was underutilized. Killing them off so early felt premature.”
“I completely agree,” Her stepbrother said, “It felt like they ran out of ideas, and did something drastic to keep the story afloat.”
“Stories just can’t take their time nowadays,” she said, “Like every episode needs to grab out attention or it’ll lose it.”
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“That’s how it is, in this attention economy,” her stepbrother said, “Other, better distractions they have to compete with.”
“What now?” her stepfather asked, “Do we keep watching it?”
His blue-grey eyes looked at her, hollow.
“We should at least finish it,” her stepbrother said, looking to her for agreement.
His blue-grey eyes looked at her, hollow.
“No, no, no, no, no,” she said, staring at her fake family. “This isn’t right.”
“What’s wrong, daughter? Did you eat too much?”
They were just that, holograms. Fakes.
There was no soul, no spark that made them people.
For the first time in a very long time, she had enough conscious thoughts to realize she was all alone.
*****
For a long time after that, she lost her motivation. She was enraged, screaming, throwing, and destroying all that the Holorealm created for her to destroy—a pointless exercise in futility, and a tantrum no one would soothe.
At some point, her rage abated, and she was left feeling hopeless and helpless.
“What in the world am I supposed to do?” She asked no one in particular, curling into a sobbing ball, if it could be called sobbing.
No one answered her.
She mindlessly completely her Sisyphean task, picking thread after thread in Limbo. Her mental state reflected what she named this strange realm. She occasionally saw cities and other realms within this strange place. She entered them, but no one could see her.
Even seeing people, although she was entirely ignored, provided some sort of relief. She held in her indistinct arms, a materialized volleyball.
“At least I have you, Wilson.”
*****
“Wilson, I’ve been thinking,” she said, calmly following after another string, “Maybe I’m some sort of ghost. I think at this point it’s a given that I’m dead.”
“No, Wilson, I don’t think it’s possible I’m not dead. If I hadn’t been dead before, my body is definitely dead now. So much time has passed!”
“Yeah, sure, I don’t really have a fix on time. Wibbly-wobbly, as you might say. What is time to a soul, anyway. I wonder if time-travel is possible as a ghost. Make the most of it, you know?”
Her strolls across Limbo turned into some sort of merry jaunt, and she wondered if she had finally lost her mind, at some point crossing the threshold into delirium.
“Yes, I know I’ve literally lost my mind,” she said, “What do you think I’m doing? Picking up my lost pieces. ‘Cuz I’ve lost it. Get it?”
Her existence fell into a strange schedule. She made days for herself, although time was indistinct and meaningless. She got up, prepared for the ‘day’. She awoke from her phone alarm, sliding it off. She got up, and made breakfast, whatever foods she liked was available to her in her fridge.
“How about leftovers, today, Wilson? Some leftovers are always nice and easy.”
She heated them up, scooping vegetables, meat, and sauce over rice. She ate, although it was meaningless; she didn’t need to eat. She brushed her teeth and got dressed, slipping onto whatever happened to be in her closet.
Her Holorealm changed every day, in flux if she didn’t fix it herself.
Her own being was in flux, a strange, starry instability of space and color in the vague shape of a human. Her fingers were more mittens than independent flesh sausages, but she could still grab things—not that it mattered. Everything was fake anyway.
“How many pieces do you reckon I have to pick up before I get a face, Wilson? Yes, more pieces than licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop. At least that much.”
She narrowed her eyes at Wilson, holding him up to eye level.
“Have you been keeping track of how many pieces I’ve gathered, like I asked? What do you mean you thought I was doing it? I literally have no memories. I’m like, the anthropomorphic…ish…representation of forgetting things.”
“If there was another Endless, I’d be Distracted.”
She found fringe memories, first. Stuff about other stuff. Popular culture, current events, science, history. Memories about herself—her name, her families names—were frustratingly absent.
“I know it wouldn’t be much of a hero’s journey if I found all the important stuff first, Wilson. Does that make me a hero?”
The ‘day’ had been like any other. She followed the paths around Limbo, plucking up threads like picking up pennies from the street. She thought she’d spend eternity like this, until something broke her monotony.
“What are you?” A being said staring at her. He had gleaming golden hair that glowed up an internal light, tied into a long and beautiful braid at his back. His features were a mix between handsome and beautiful, and the expression of someone who knew he was such. His eyes were a similar glowing gold, pointed and piercing. He exuded confidence arrogance, his posture equally graceful as it was powerful.
She was so shocked she froze.
“Wilson, am I hallucinating others than just you now?”
“I’m not a hallucination,” the glowing golden man said.
She pointed to herself, “You can see me?”
His expression crinkled, annoyed, “Why wouldn’t I be able to?”
“Are you a ghost, like me?”
“I’m not a ghost. You’re not a ghost either.”
“I’m not a ghost? Hey, but Wilson, didn’t this guy just ask me what I was?”
“Stop talking to your ball, its nonsensical,” Gold-man said, frowning, “I’m right here.”
She clutched Wilson closer to her chest, “Don’t say that to him. That’s rude.”
“I ask again, being, what are you?”
Her hands shook, and her voice, if it could be called that, wavered, “I, uh, don’t know.”
“Do you have a name? A title? An entity group? A faction?”
“Forgotten, if I had any. Human, probably. Does that help?”
The gold man sighed, reaching his hand out.
“Come. Follow me.”
She hesitatingly reached forward, feeling something ‘real’ for the first time in a while. Just that sensation alone caused her mind to shake, as if experiencing a high magnitude earthquake. The space around her seemed to warble and bend, mirroring her thoughts.
The gold being shook his head at the drama unfolding, and dragged her towards a place. It was a city for the non-physical, beings like and unlike herself.
Most were non-humanoid. A swarm of blood red lamprey-leeches, wriggling and writhing together as one sentient mass. A strange shadow being cast with no light, feet disappearing above the ground. A glimmering lantern housing a blue flame of light, floating above the rest.
“Are you sure you guys are demons or ghosts or something like that. Is this Hell?”
“This is not ‘hell’,” The gold man said flatly, “This is the Deep Astral.”
“Look, honestly, I’m not upset with Hell. As long as there’s no eternal torture or eternal slavery, my standards are pretty damn low right now. Maybe this whole Limbo thing, I just needed to accept I wasn’t meant for Heaven. Am I a demon?” She looked down at her form, “A space demon? I’m cool with that. Woot woot, team Satan! How do I sign up to join the crew? Or maybe no eternal torture or eternal slavery is a high standard? What do you think, Wilson? You guys aren’t on some sort of eternal job contract as demons, are you?”
She had, after all, escaped eternal torture or eternal slavery. Maybe in the schema of the universe, freedom was a rare and precious gem.
“I do not know what ‘Hell’ is,” Gold man said, “And we are not demons. We are astral beings.”
“Not…souls?”
“No.”
“But also, not fake?”
“Why is that even in question?” Gold man said with incredulity.
“Look, I’ve sort of had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad…millennia, I think.” She said. “My perception of, uh, what is ‘real’ is not reliable.”
“Evidently,” He said, “You keep talking to a sphere.”
“Better partly sane than insane, right Wilson? I do what I can. Look uh, gold man.”
“Chrome,” he said.
“Look, Chrome. I think I’m supposed to be a soul. Or I was, at some point. Am I that different from the ones you recognize. Have you seen a soul before?”
“Many,” Chrome said, his eyes narrowing, “Now that I get a better look at you, you are a soul, with something else mixed in.”
He examined her intensely.
“With the astral mixed in.” He said with rising curiosity, “How is that possible?”
“Don’t ask me,” she said, “I barely remember jack shit about myself and I’m talking to a volleyball. The uh, movie reference keeps me motivated. Maybe there is really something back there.”