That feeling of improvement lasted all the way until he got in the shower, where the train of tears returned in full force and forced him to huddle down in the same spot from… when was it? Less than seventeen hours ago. At least this time he had music to keep him company and distract him from the overwhelming miasma of heart-wrenching memories. It didn’t do a very good job, but it was still better than nothing. Better than being left completely alone to be battered by regrets and sorrows.
He wasn’t even sure what he was regretful for. For his past self and actions? For not being a better son? A better brother? A better friend and a better human being? Why should he be regretful about that? Obviously, he wasn’t the best person in the world, but he was good enough by most accounts. So why did he feel these great currents of guilt washing over him? Why did his mind replay a dozen different memories at the same time, coming up with a dozen different suggestions for how he should’ve acted, could’ve acted better? And how could it all cause him so much pain but, at the same time, feel so meaningless?
He kept fixating on a memory from when he was six years old. He didn’t remember the context; the end result; the motivation behind his actions or what he thought about them afterwards. He only remembered what happened; what he did. His parents took him to a park for—if he remembered correctly—a family get-together, and he threw a tantrum midway through the proceedings. No rhyme, no reason for why he did that. Probably just an overstimulated six-year-old acting out in the only way he knew out. And who could blame a six-year-old for throwing a tantrum? For acting seemingly irrationally when they didn’t even have a rational self-reflective mind yet? Only the twenty-two-year-old that inherited his memories, that’s who.
The same twenty-two-year-old who found himself crying, wallowing in the knowledge that he’ll never see any of those faces ever again. That the unnamed park which only carried negative connotations for him was gone forever, remembered by no other person. That the house he grew up in was gone. The neighborhood. The city. The country. The world. The whole fucking world. Crumbled and shattered and out of reach, stuck in whatever the existence outside of the Web looked like.
How many people living today truly wept for the lost Earth? Truly yearned for its past glories? How many people still viewed it as home? Fewer people than there were Taken most likely. After all, he and Sarah were the only Taken who hadn’t already lived most of their life in this new magical reality, rather than in the ordinary existence of their abandoned homeland. All the other Taken probably still missed their life there, their loved ones, the places they grew in, and the culture they grew with. But did they really care about Earth itself? About all billions of its inhabitants? Its thousands of cultures and years of history? The wonders, both hand and nature made? Was he the only one? And would he, one day, find himself forgetting about his past world as well? Viewing this new reality, and the magic enshrined in it, as nothing more than the ordinary state of things? How things really are? How things should be?
He let out a groan, which turned into a self-pitying wail, only to end as a snarl. This was bullshit! It was unbearable! He had so many things to feel sorrow for, to cry and howl over! But of course, that wasn’t enough! It wouldn’t be right for just the past to keep tugging at his heart and mind. The present had to be given its due as well: Spiking his heartbeats with fear and anxiety, for himself and for everyone else, making him want to vomit. How the hell was he supposed to get over feeling like this? It was impossible. No other Taken in history was told that the fate of existence rested on their shoulders. There was no use comparing between him and them, no relief to draw from their experience. He was fucked. He felt like shit and he was going to keep feeling like shit until the day he failed in his duty and died (the former most likely happening much earlier than the latter).
If he was so fucking important to the war effort, why couldn’t his benefactor make the magic keep his mind addled for way longer? Or make him level 10 right from the get go? Why put him on this impossible road, have him suffer through all this pain and misery, striving to match up to an ideal that he wasn’t suited for? Why him? Eight billion people. Never mind the reasoning, never mind his argued potential. Why him and not any one of them? Why did he deserve to get fucked with this job? Was his life not hard enough before? Did he not suffer more than he deserved? Why all of this… shit? This sorrow for the past. Anxiety about the present. Fear for the future. Even if he really was the best person for the job, why did he have to be the one to suffer through it?
He shook his head while letting out a mirthless laugh. “I can’t even make up my fucking mind on whether to be sad or scared. Anxious or angry. Can’t choose between hating the past more or the present. So fucking stupid… Just keep switching between the two, between the million other things you feel bad about. That ought to help you feel better, asshole. Fucking idiot. This is shit. It’s all shit. I just want to go to sleep and not wake up until I stop feeling like this. But how is that a realistic goal? How the fuck can you stop feeling like shit when there’s so much shit to deal with?”
He sighed. His mind turned blank, and he just kept staring at the wall for who knows how long. A blank mind, but all the negative emotions in the world roiling in his heart. Eventually, with the help of a certain song, he snapped out of it. He slowly got up to finish his shower and managed to get into his robe just as the last of the simple melody receded. At least it was a good song to end the day with. Now all he had to do was crash onto his bed and fall into blessed sleep.
But the minutes passed and sleep never came. What did come, however, was the realization that he might’ve pushed his body too far, and that the long shower in the steam filled room certainly didn’t help. He struggled up before pivoting downwards and right to grab his room bottle, in the hope that the water will help the squeezing in his lungs somewhat. And when that didn’t help, he fully got up and opened the window wide open, letting the cool evening air grace the room with its presence. Absentmindedly, he sat down in front of the desk and took a look at the time on his phone. No wonder he couldn’t manage to fall asleep. It was still way earlier than his usual bedtime. Not to mention the other… problems hindering his way toward blissful unconsciousness.
“Oh right, there’s the pills…” He went to his bag and took the bottle Maurice gave him what felt so long ago. He read through the instruction twice, as he couldn’t focus enough to understand anything the first time. It was just as Maurice said, take one a couple of minutes before going to bed. Which meant that, from now on, he might as well go to bed early straight after taking them. What’s there for him to lose? Just a couple of minutes of wallowing in self-misery without being able to fall asleep? That has been most of today already.
He turned the bottle side to side in his hand before shaking his head. “Might as well get dressed,” he said with a sigh. That simple action took him much longer than it ought to have. A statement that could probably be used to describe the entire day. Fully dressed, he considered what he was going to do with the rest of his evening. He didn’t much relish the thought of taking another stab at falling asleep right now, even with the aid of a sleeping pill. Better to wait some more, use that time to relax. And how would he relax? He didn’t feel like reading. Mediating was obviously out of the question. He didn’t want to play any games. He didn’t want to do anything active. That only left mindlessly watching something that would’ve made him happy on any ordinary day. Luckily, he already had something queued up from yesterday, so he avoided the major hurdle that was deciding what to watch.
So he settled down across the monitor to watch silently. And while it didn’t really help him feel any better. At least he didn’t feel worse. And he managed to keep his focus on the screen in front of him, and not slide back down to the depths of his mind and the million causes for sorrow that haunted him at every waking moment. Half an hour passed in that relative calmness and while he didn’t feel more tired, he did start to feel more comfortable with the prospect of taking another gamble on sleep. It was still way before his bedtime, but whatever. People needed more sleep when they were depressed.
A couple of minutes later, he decided he was going crazy. He suddenly started hearing the rushing sound of the ocean wave. It started from a gentle, almost unnoticeable sway, but by now it had turned into a full-blown seafront. He paused the video and rubbed his eyes and ears. “What the actual fuck?!” He looked outside, using the opportunity to close most of the window, but obviously found nothing. The noise was coming from inside his mind. “What the hell is going on?! Fuck. I need to call Maurice. This definitely isn’t supposed to happen.”
“That is not necessary,” sounded an all too familiar voice that, despite not hearing from for two months, Sam never once forgot about.
“Web-Web?” Sam asked with gritted teeth and hammering heart as he sat back down. “This your doing?”
“Indeed. You have asked of us to try and contact you in a fashion that is more… gradual. This is the best solution we have found to that request as it does not carry with it any extra energy cost.”
“I thought you weren’t able to contact me any other way at all…”
“We were mistaken. After giving the subject more thought. We have come up with this solution.”
“Yeah, some solution. I thought I was going crazy.”
“That was not our intention. Should we search for an alternative method, then?”
“What? No, that’s… fine. Now that I know that was you, I’ll be fine next time it happens… probably.”
“That is good. We are glad.”
“I’m sure you are, mate… I’m sure you are. So, to what do I owe your visit? Here to tell me to suck it up because I’m not performing up to your minimal requirements?”
“This has nothing to do with my promise to contact you in the case that you’re not progressing as required.”
“Then what is it? You said that, besides that, you wouldn’t have any other reason to contact me for a long time.”
“We are here because of your recent psychological development.”
“Of course you are... So this is what? The fourth unscheduled appointment you have to hold with me because I’m more mentally unstable than what you’ve planned for? Better keep an eye out for how free you are with these contacts, you only have 25%.”
“That assessment is not… the most accurate.”
“Well obviously you’ve already used it three times before today, so it’s less than 25%.”
“That is not the fault we found with your statement. You spoke of today’s contact as being unscheduled. Not accounted for. That is, strictly speaking, not true.”
Sam sighed. “What the hell does that mean?”
“We… spoke falsely when we informed you that we will have no mandate to contact you until we have new knowledge to bequeath upon you.”
“You spoke falsely? You mean you lied? Why? To prevent me from being worried about today?”
“No. And we did not lie. We were simply not in full possession of the facts. So we made the wrong statement.”
“Run that by me again? How can you not be in full possession of the facts when you’re the one making them? What, do you have an alarm for when you’re ‘mandated’ to contact me but you don’t know about it until the alarm rings? You realize how inane that sounds?”
Web-Web paused for a few seconds. “We do understand how it might come off to you. And we are sorry for misleading you. But, the undeniable truth is that when we last spoke, we did not know that making contact with you today was required of us and that the energy for it had already been allocated.”
“How the hell not? You’re an AI. You can’t forget stuff.”
“We don’t forget what we already know, yes. But until today, we did not know about this at all.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense. How would you suddenly gain new knowledge out of nowhere? Matter of fact, that’s the least of my worries. How could you possibly not know about this until today? Did you not do the math of how much energy each of your secluded meetings requires of you? Did you not notice that you had energy to spare?”
“We… we do not posses the full knowledge of all of our foreseen future interactions.”
“You’re shitting me. So that whole amnesia angle that you’ve got going on, it doesn’t only have to do with knowledge from the past that is, according to you, not important, but it also extends to the fucking future, which is, according to you, very fucking important. And I’m betting that a smart being like you hadn’t just realized it today, right? So really, that’s what you should be apologizing to me for. Lying by omission. Telling me that I can put my trust in your vision for my future when you don’t even have a vision at all.”
“We do have a vision, a plan. We just do not posses full knowledge of it at this time.”
“That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
“Back when we were… before we split off our consciousness to join it with your body, we have made a plan. A plan that takes every possible variable into account and guarantees your success and the survival of the Web and its people. We simply do—”
“How can you even be sure that you made a plan? Much less that the plan accounted for ‘every possible variable’ if you don’t remember what the plan is? Do you even remember making the plan? Every time we talk, it sounds like the gaps between the knowledge you currently have and what you had is getting bigger. You keep discovering stuff that you had no clue about and that you don’t know even more stuff that you initially thought. What if one day you wake up and find out that there isn’t any plan, and you just forced yourself to believe that there was one? Or that the plan is actually shit and doesn’t work?”
“That is not a possibility.”
“That’s a great argument. ‘How do you know God exists?’ ‘Oh, it’s not possible for God to not exist.’ What makes you think it’s not possible?”
“We are certain of the plan’s existence in the same way you are certain of living and breathing.”
“Oh great! Juuust great!” Sam released one burst of a hollow laugh. “We’ve come all the way back to epistemology. It’s like we never left. In fact, we pretty much didn’t. Your reasoning for why your master plan must exist and be accurate is just as dumb as Descartes’ argument for the existence of God. Face it, if you don’t remember coming up with the plan, and you don’t remember what it is, then even if it is real, you’ll never know why it is like that, and we’ll never know if it’s actually good or not.”
“Even if your argument holds true, do you have any better alternative?”
“Sure, why not? I can just kill myself and let everyone else sort this shit out. I mean, they probably have just as good of a chance at saving themselves as I do.”
Stolen story; please report.
“They do not. We might not posses the full knowledge of our plan for you. Nor why we came to the decision that without your intervention defeat for the Web is certain. But it is certain that we once fully knew both. Our current lack of knowledge doesn’t affect the certainty that what we once knew was completely true. Imagine that before we joined with you, we had made up a fool-proof equation, showcasing that without you the Epiraks will surely win while at the same time paving a path for you to best them. That equation still exists, and it still holds true. It doesn’t matter if we don’t posses all the knowledge that guided us in making that equation as long as we posses enough of the knowledge to correctly guide you in following it.”
Sam threw his hands up in the air. “You just said that until this morning you didn’t know an important part of that ‘equation.’ So what about all the other parts of it that you still don’t know about?”
“If our knowledge of them is required, then it will surely return to us when we have need of it. We were not required to act on the information that a contact with you today was already planned. So just like we were able to provide guidance to you today, we would be able to guide you in the future just as well.”
“Just as well, huh? OK, leaving that aside. How the hell does your drip-feed of new information even work? And more importantly, why?”
“We assume that our… previous incarnation… that they designed us as such. That we do not possess all of the knowledge that it had and will, instead, have that knowledge revealed to us when the right time comes, as per their calculations.”
“Still not answering why…”
“We are not certain. But we believe that this current version of ourself is more… flawed, or perhaps limited is the correct word. And that if we were in full possession of the knowledge we spoke of, we would not be able to act optimally as is required of us. Perhaps you are correct, and the reason we did not know about our contact with you today being pre-necessitated was to prevent us from acting in such a way that would affect you negatively. Perhaps it is only a mechanical limitation of the sort we spoke of in the past. Regardless of the reason, what is most important is that when we receive new knowledge, we act upon in order to guide you correctly. We have no reason to believe that we would not be able to do so or that you would not be able to follow our guidance. Just like we have today.”
“And what exactly is the new knowledge you received today? And how are you planning to guide me using it? It seems to me that so far, you haven’t been really doing any guiding, more of answering my questions. Does this make today’s contact a wasted one? Will you need to take another bite of the twenty-five because of that?”
“No. That will not be necessary. The only new piece of information that we discovered after you woke up was that a mandated contact was scheduled. It wasn’t specified how exactly we should act when speaking to you and what we should inform you of. It seems reasonable to assume that the reason for today’s contact is simple: to help improve your mental wellbeing, which we have correctly assumed would suffer damage today.”
Sam slowly exhaled and rubbed his eyes, trying to work out his annoyance. It felt like every time that he and Web-Web spoke; the AI made a little less sense, which caused Sam to be a little less certain in his trust of them. “You realize that contacting me for the sake of my ‘mental wellbeing’ is pretty much the same reason why you already contacted me three times before? Why did your previous all-knowing incarnation not know about them? What more could you possibly have to tell me that I haven’t didn’t already ‘gotten’ from our previous talks?”
“We do not know. We did not know what to tell you the previous three times as well. But it doesn’t matter. Even if this meeting proves unnecessary in the end because of the previous unscheduled three, it will not hinder you in any way. We still have more than enough energy to carry out all of our duties to you and relay you with all required information. And we must assume that it our ability to interact with you was considered such that our contacts will always end with a positive result.”
“Yeah well… we can certainly hope that those two assumptions are correct. Very much fucking hope so. Alright, then. Give it to me. Your words of encouragement or whatever. Surely you had something in mind after having the whole day to prepare.”
“We simply sought to inform you that we, that is in our previous form, did take into account the fact that you will most likely suffer gravely from the mental effects of your mind finishing its adapting to magic. As such, we have surely planned for a period of decreased productivity in your training as a result. Seeing as we do not posses a concrete plan on how to proceed forward from this point, we believe that none is required on our part and that we can simply leave the decisions to you and your tutors. Of course, we still have an overall timetable for your progress, but you are already ahead of it, so there is no reason to think that training with decreased productivity, or even not training at all for some time, was not planned for.”
“So essentially, you’re also telling me that I should take it easy.”
“We simply seek to inform you that were you to ‘take it easy,’ as in dedicating less time to strengthening yourself than you usually do. That such an occurrence was already foreseen and taken into account. So the possibility, or reality, of your progress slowing down for the foreseeable future, until you finish acclimating to your new situation, should not result in any negative mental effects for yourself.”
“Wow, that’s great. Got the go-ahead from the Less Knowing Web-Web that even if I were to suck because I feel like shit, it’s all fine according to the All Knowing Plan. Of course, as is usual with you, you’re still not giving me a whole lot of information. How long am I allowed to wallow in self-misery? A week? Two weeks? A month? What if the year ends and I’m still feeling like shit and can’t trace Skin Reinforcement?”
“That will not happen. We are more than certain that your wellbeing and ability to train will steadily improve and return to normal before you reach the point where your progress is lagging.”
Sam chuckled. “Wow, you really are working with the same lines as everyone else. They all said that I will surely get better before too long. Every other Taken did. So why not me?”
“Indeed.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“But your statement was correct. There is nothing in your psychological profile that indicates you will be unable to get better in an acceptable time frame.”
“What psychological profile? You didn’t know anything about me until I was returned. And, by your own admission, you still don’t understand most things about people; our behavior and thoughts.”
“That may be true. But it is also true that your personality must have been known when you were chosen by our former self. There is no reason to suspect that version of ourself was incapable of understanding and predicting your behavior much better than us, if not perfectly.”
“That version of yourself couldn’t even take into account the fact that you’ll need to speak to me three times before today.”
“That is not necessarily true. Most likely, we simply could not ascertain the time in which conversations of that kind will be required to take place. The fact that we allocated a significant amount of our reserves for those occasions surely means that we had planned for them.”
“Fuck… you know what? I’m not going to get anything from arguing with you about this, so let’s just drop it, shall we? But what about the purpose of today’s meeting, then? The fact remains that, since you didn’t get a pre-written guide on what exactly you should say to make me feel better, the ‘plan’ only extended as far as contacting me and telling me that I shouldn't be worried about the future. Now, I’m sorry to tell you this, but nothing you said has made me feel better. Not only that, but in my opinion, there’s nothing this version of you—that I keep rediscovering every time we talk—could’ve said that would’ve made me feel better. It doesn’t matter anyway because you pretty much just regurgitated everything the people around me spent the whole day saying. Which, obviously, didn’t work for them, as you still felt that you had to contact me.”
“That is unfortunate. Our goal was indeed to make a noticeable impact on your mental wellbeing. At the very least, we thought that we would help with your anxiety; your worry about your own actions and performance that you’ve recounted to us before. Perhaps you simply need some more time to process it and internalize what we said as the truth. And once you do, it will surely help you feel better.”
Sam scoffed. “When did you become an expert? If I knew I already had a therapist on hand, I wouldn’t have agreed to meet one on Sunday.”
“We still suggest arriving at that appointment. Expert help will, most likely, be very beneficial to you and to speed up the time it takes you to return to your usual self.”
“Yeah, no shit. Also, how the hell is my usual self the one from yesterday? That was me under outside influence. This is the real me.”
“The influence of magic on your mind simply diluted the negative emotions you’re currently suffering from and allowed you to act more in according with your base personality. Functionally, you have behaved in the same manner that you will in the future, once enough time has passed for you to better regulate your emotional state, so the negative information that affects you currently will have the same effect on you as it did yesterday. It this case, it is quite clear that the version of you from yesterday should be counted as closer to your ‘usual self’ as the one from today.”
“Stop saying things are clear. Nothing changed between now and five minutes ago when you didn’t have any idea how people work.”
“We do posses some information about mortals’ behaviors and thoughts. And we continuously gather more every day. Using that information, we extrapolated our previous claim about the more basic version of who you are. We apologize if we made it seem as though it was necessarily the truth, but we do believe it to be the truth. Nevertheless, we can both agree that suffering from the negative emotions as you currently do, and the way they affect your behavior, is not the ideal situation for you and the Web. So getting rid of the negative effects of these emotions as fast as possible is the best path forwards for you.”
“Not fastest. If I wanted to get rid of them the fastest, I would probably start doing heroin or something, now that drugs have an effect on me. What you’re looking for is as fast as health considerations would allow.”
“That is a more appropriate framing. You are correct. Which is why we argued for the importance of keeping your scheduled meeting on Sunday.”
“I’m obviously going to go. That was never off the cards. Trust me, even if you were a million times more helpful, it still wouldn’t be enough for me to not need… an expert’s help.”
“Good. We hope that it will help improve your condition and return you to prime form as soon as, health considerations given due, possible.”
Sam gave the empty air a thumbs up and, after a minute passed in total silence, he said. “Guess that they regressed back to not being able to say goodnight.”
“We are still here.”
“Then why aren’t you saying anything?”
“Because we have nothing more to say if you do not require our help for improving your mental wellbeing.”
“Then why are you still here? Go to sleep or whatever it is you do. Save some of that energy you prize so much.”
“That would be a waste. We have yet to reach the point where we must allocate additional energy beyond the initial amount we have already spent.”
“So you’re just going to be floating around in my head until your time runs out?”
“Unless there is information or guidance that you require from us, and which we are able to give you.”
“Oh, great. And what would that be? Telling me I’m sure to triumph for the hundredth time, because you chose me when you had all the knowledge in the Web? That’s for guidance, at least. For knowledge, what can you actually tell me? We need both information that you do posses and are allowed to present me with. Teach me about threads then. Why don’t you?”
“You are not ready to start learning about threads.”
“Of course I’m not. And I don’t need to anyway because there are other people out there who can teach me that information, so you telling me about it would be a waste of time, right? Not like we’re wasting time now. So what else? Is there any information you can give me that I am ready to learn about, and that there aren’t people out there who can teach me it?”
“None currently that would be prescient for you to succeed in our plan for you.”
“Well, our time is wasted anyway. So go hog wild. Tell me about whatever. Hell, tell me about the Reshan. Am I allowed to know about them yet? No one else seems to know anything about them, so that’s that hurdle taken care of.”
“We do not posses much knowledge of the Reshan.”
“That still sounds like more knowledge than anyone else in the Web has. Unless there are still Reshan hiding somewhere in the Web.”
“There are none. They all left.”
“Left? Where did they go?”
“We do not know. All we know about them is the knowledge they initially bestowed us with, and what we managed to acquire from interacting with the sites they left behind. And even though it is certain that we currently do not posses the full breadth of that knowledge, we are certain we never knew the answer to your question.”
“So what about the knowledge you still posses? What do you remember about the beings who created you? You don’t know where they went. Do you at least know how they left? I was under the assumption that the Web is… a closed system.”
“We presume that they left the same way they arrived.”
Sam straightened up. “Wait a moment, arrived? You mean that the Reshan weren’t natives to the Web?”
“Of course not. For us to come into being at the same moment as the Web did, they had to lay the foundations for our inception well before the Web existed. There was no Web for them to be in when they worked on creating us. In fact, they have never been in the Web at all. Whatever exists of the Reshan in the Web was planted by them before they left.”
“Planted how? What was even here before the Web?”
“We do not know. We have probably made assumptions in the past. But, currently, we do not posses information regarding any of those.”
“But there is something outside of the Web? There is some version of reality? Is it my old reality? Is Earth still out there?”
“Earth was destroyed after its integration into the Web was complete. The material that made Earth was devoured by the… Web’s void. And most of the magical essence that made it went to strengthening the world of New Terra.”
“I thought that New Terra was already a pretty good world prior to the Integration.”
“It was good enough to sustain the cultivation of millions comfortably. It currently sustains the biggest concentration of population in the entire Web. That is only thanks to the remnants of Earth’s magic being diverted to it.”
“And how do you know about that? You were gone from the Web before the Integration was over, before Earth was destroyed.”
“We posses the knowledge that New Terra was not as magically dense before. It would take a millennium of active enrichment for the change that occurred in this world to have occurred without Earth’s resources. Besides, with Earth gone, the Terrans would’ve needed a proper base from which to grow into their full potential, and in which to educate you. Diverting what could be salvaged of Earth into New Terra is what we would’ve done. So we must have done so.”
Sam took a moment to reorganize his thoughts before releasing a sigh. “Fuck me. So this is literally the closest I’m ever going to come to Earth ever again… I guess that also means that New Terra is a little bit less of a shit name.”
“Did you have hopes of returning to Earth before?”
“No… I knew it was shattered or whatever. I just didn’t expect that the metaphysical magic that made it what it was—not that I knew it even existed—was here under my feet. Don’t know whether to feel good or bad about it… Do other people know about New Terra ‘absorbing’ Earth?”
“Those with knowledge of New Terra’s magical density before and after Earth’s integration must. But a world’s essence being absorbed by another is not a singular phenomenon in the Web. If a world loses its ability to maintain form and is covered by the void, then the magic nourishing it will be redistributed by the Web naturally, without our input. With most of it going to neighboring worlds. Our involvement with Earth’s end was simply to take control of that phenomenon and actively guide its magic to New Terra.”
“And would that involvement seem… unnatural to some of those with the knowledge of New Terra’s magical density? Might they have a reason to suspect your input in the matter?”
“That is no cause for concern, like we—”
“And what about suspecting you exist in general? Is the reason I shouldn’t tell other people about you and my ‘purpose’ that there are people out there who already know that you, or a being like you, exist?”
“We… do not believe so. We believe that the knowledge of our existence knowledge is just as secret as the knowledge that we have chosen you.”
“How can you be so sure? What if you simply don’t posses the information of someone else knowing about you? After all, if you’re some complete unknown, then what does it matter if people know about me in connection to you? They’re not going to believe it.”
“There are people that believe the Web has a mind guiding its actions. They do not know this for sure, but they believe it. Were they to know of us, they would incorrectly infer us as being that mind. Just that incorrect assumption is reason enough for the enemy to target you relentlessly. Were the enemy to possess the same knowledge of us that you have, you will not survive long. No matter the lack of knowledge they currently have of us.”
“Ah… the enemy. And what are the Epiraks, then? Are they outside visitors like the Reshan? Or is that information you don’t know or that you can’t tell me yet? I’m pretty sure their origin is a mystery to our side of the Web, so no one’s going to tell me about that in due time.”
“The knowledge of the enemy is not required for you to combat and defeat them. At the very least, it is not required for you now, as we do not posses much that you yourself don’t know. We do know one thing, though: the Epiraks aren’t like the Reshan. They are as native to the Web as you are.”
Sam stared dumbfounded at the empty air. “You realize I’m not native to the Web, right?”
“…True. That was a mistake in our statement. We simply meant to say that the Epiraks are natives to the Web. Apologies for the confusion.”
“That’s fine. I should probably start seeing myself as a Web native as well. Probably make me feel better faster. That’s the whole point of your contact today, after all.”
“That was the goal we set out to achieve, yes. We apologize if we did not succeed in it and haven’t provided you with more mental comfort. But for now, we must bid you goodnight. Our time has almost run out and since you professed to not requiring any more of it to be spent...”
“Goodnight,” Sam said after a minute’s silence. Taking a deep breath, he slowly exhaled and said, “Keep popping up in times like this and I’ll start developing a Pavlovian response every time I hear your voice. Although, I’m guessing that now it’ll be the sound of the waves, so that’s just another reason not to go to the beach. The sea will make me depressed.”
“Ah, fuck it.” He stretched with a groan. “Let’s just go to sleep.” He took a pill without a second’s consideration. Sat down with eyes closed as he played Here Comes the Sun for the last time of the day. Then he turned in for the night. Thankfully, it was lights out before he knew it.