After returning from the festival full of fresh ideas for how to finetune their program, Dema spent a lot of time brooding over new songs. Meanwhile, Theora spent a lot of time leaning against Dema’s soft body draped against her, listening to her her hum in her raspy low voice while trying to figure out lyrics.
Theora couldn’t, however, shake off the feeling that something was weighing on Dema. And after those days at the festival, that wasn’t necessarily surprising. Enough had happened.
That included two promises. Dema made two promises to Theora, back to back; one, that they would not have to meet their end, and two, that Theora would not have to desecrate Amanda’s empty grave.
Dema always did so much, behind the scenes, on the scenes, after the scenes. Even though her body barely carried her twenty steps without faltering or having her bump into something, even though she got feverish every few days, even though she spent so much time at the hospital.
It was time Theora tried to figure out how to help Dema, too. Sure — she made tea, she changed Dema’s drenched clothes in the middle of the night, she hugged her, carried her, prepared food — but these things, anyone would do. There had to be something only she could do for Dema, a way to make their time here worthwhile.
Of the eighty-six days to become the best band they could, only twenty-one were left, and while Theora would still obviously decide that she wanted to keep going, the approaching deadline made her nervous.
And so, Theora found herself with her phone in her hand late at night, awoken from her worried thoughts, as Dema was snoring softly beside her.
She wrote a message to the anonymous sender.
‘I would like to talk about Dema.’
The answer came about half an hour later.
‘Oh! Sure! Glad to hear from you. Gosh, it’s been so long… if you don’t count those annoyed-sounding messages from a while ago but I guess those still kinda warmed my heart!’
‘I should apologise for doing this to you.’
Again, the reply took a while; Theora didn’t really want to think too much about the process, she only hope her daughter didn’t have to exert herself too much.
‘Nah, it’s alright. At the time I didn’t really know as much about Verisimilitude constraints, Invie really filled in some important blanks there. I’m Iso, by the way! But I guess what I’m saying is that things would have actually maybe even ended kinda poorly if you’d responded properly. I’m the one who should apologise! I mean, I won’t, because I’m a little stubborn and I still think you ought to have known, and I was working on the information I had, but…’
Invent One’s words from their first meeting echoed back into Theora’s mind: Your child established contact with me a while ago and proceeded to share a lot of data.
She really did ‘share lots of data’, didn’t she? It was quite endearing. Theora smiled at the phone.
‘Well, let’s catch up later,’ Theora wrote. ‘But for now I want to ask if you know something about Dema. She seems to be struggling a lot, and you seem to know about our past.’
‘Oh yeah you mean because she’s dying?’
What?
Theora stared at the words for about a minute, and then a new text appeared ‘Oh god, did you not know? Actually, let me see if I can establish a phone call somehow. One second.’
That message managed to somehow horrify Theora even more — Dema was sleeping peacefully right next to her, and she did not want to wake her up. Iso had only given her one second, so she quickly and quietly opened the window and jumped out. By the time she landed on the street next to her little shed in her nightgown with a soft thump, the phone was already ringing.
“I—yes?” Theora managed.
“Sorry for that sudden scare,” Iso said, and Theora wasn’t sure which scare she was referring to. “Also, let me know if you get exhausted at some point — I don’t expect it, but I am sapping your energy to make this call.” Theora didn’t really feel any different. “But yea. Dema’s been fighting it off for a while, but her time in that world is nearing its end.”
“She’s going to die,” Theora repeated. “You mean, outside of — unrelated to my main quest?”
“Oh? Oh, yeah, obviously. Wait, have you been worried about that?”
Theora didn’t respond.
“You are in a world that rejects what doesn’t fit its laws of nature. Dema is a demon. She’s a magical being. In a way, she is an embodiment of defiance. The world you are in is slowly crushing her.”
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“So it’s more than her being sickly,” Theora let out. She was in hospice care for a while, but from the way they’d talked, it sounded like the doctors had just been wrong about things.
“Yes. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the world was trying to get rid of you too; you probably just don’t realise because you’re you.”
Theora shut her eyes. Of course, now it made sense. “I have back pain sometimes.”
“Yea… seems like that world is trying its best.”
“So, is Invent One having those same issues…? It said it’s a dreamer too.”
“Well, One’s occupying a body from that world specifically for that reason. The rest of it is splintered off into what it calls its ‘Larger Self’, meaning it’s an outside observer that is not actually inside that harmful reality.”
“Amanda’s body is shielding it from these effects…?”
“Yeah! The human body is like a space suit, you know? Or maybe, like a little space ship. Keeps the hostile environment out and allows part of One to move around there.”
“So it’s like we’re in space right now.”
“It’s a pretty accurate metaphor, all things considered. Like, of course, you of all people can go to space without any defences. But someone like Dema has more trouble, despite being immortal in our world… Like how she had to make a little spaceship out of blood to get you home, right?”
“I remember.” Theora settled on the asphalt cross legged.
“But basically it’s like that,” Isobel went on. “The world you’re in now has an immune system, so to speak. Something got in and now it’s trying to get rid of the intruder.”
“You mean… this world is alive?”
“Don’t stretch my metaphor like that! Not what I’m saying. It’s a complex system. Complex systems will strive towards balance to keep existing, no mind required. Honestly doesn’t even have to be complex. Like a marble rolling to the centre of a bowl. There certainly could be a living world; like, when you visited that book and squabbled with that author? The author seemed to actively engage in the narrative in some way, so yeah, maybe you could call that world alive. There’s no evidence to indicate such a thing where you’re currently at. To bacteria, it doesn’t matter whether the body can make conscious choices. The question is irrelevant!”
“Alright.”
“But anyway, since I know how your brain works: I’m not trying to make you feel bad for the world you visited, I’m trying to let you know that Dema’s in danger.”
Theora let out a sigh, and laid down on her back, looking up at the starry sky. She almost expected a voice to ring out; no voice came. She hadn’t heard from her Head in the Clouds since starting to take medication in this world. “We really messed up by going here, then,” Theora murmured.
“Should be fine as long as you return before it gets too bad,” Isobel said and Theora could almost hear her rock body shrug through the connection; or maybe she just imagined it after having experienced Isobel making that gesture so many times before. “Just take care of her like you have been. She’s been bragging about that for a while, you know?”
Theora let out a deep breath. “So then, I fetch the Fragment of Time, we return, but then what? If travelling to other worlds is so dangerous, then how are we going to find the rest?”
“Yeah, well, actually you just kind of got unlucky with this one I guess? Like, not all worlds have Verisimilitudes this high. We can just fetch them from the ones that aren’t this averse to outside influence.”
“I don’t quite understand what that word means,” Theora admitted.
“Basically just a measurement of how ‘real’ a world is. Like if you imagine 0 Verisimilitude to be a world where there’s no internal consistency at all, and 100 to be one where you experience heavy rejection upon entry… I mean, it also depends on how incongruent you are with the target world. If you adhere to its laws of nature, then even visiting a world with a high Verisimilitude should be fine. We just have to find places that are compatible.”
“And we just happen to have gone to one with a higher value,” Theora concluded. That did, in some way, make sense.
Isobel said with a sigh, “It’s a bit more unlucky than that, I fear. In a way, you could say that where you are right now is probably the Reality — V100. Compared to which everything else is less real. I mean, who knows what’s out there, but it wouldn’t be surprising to me.”
Theora tapped her feet against the asphalt, trying to make sense of what Isobel was saying. What made her think that this world’s V was that high? Well, granted, Dema was a fairly sturdy person, so that alone was a good indicator, but why the highest of all? “How would that even work?” she murmured out loud. Theora remembered Dema having told her that it was the setting of an old branch of Hallmark literature. “Isn’t this world made up?”
“Yeah, it’s made up,” Isobel confirmed. “But remember the point of DespairLit? It’s supposed to be this bleak world where people are beholden to many outside forces, where they can’t be truly free. Obviously, the Verisimilitude that goes along with that would be oppressive. It’s heavily exaggerated on purpose. That’s what made it a fun thought experiment to those classical writers in the first place. They went and invented a V100 world for fun and now you’re stuck there.”
Right. Of course, this world could be both made up and the most ‘real’ thing imaginable, if someone had invented it to be just so. Still. “I see what you mean, but… I don’t know. Something about the way you say it bothers me,” Theora admitted.
“Oh? What’s that?”
Theora’s gaze wandered down the street. There were Serim and her friends, as well as the many communities around the world like them. “It’s not the lack of magic that makes things the way they are in this place. People can be free here too. And eventually, they will be.”
“Oh,” Isobel said. “I like that thought. Yeah. I hope one day they’ll be free.”
They shared a moment of silence, and then Theora sat up and pushed the hair out of her face. “Well, I should go back to bed, I don’t want Dema to wake up alone. Thank you for letting me know about all of this. I’ll ask her again if she wants to leave early.”
“Take care of each other!” Isobel chirped. “I’ll start preparing for your return too. I heard you kissed? I’ll soundproof your bedroom walls.”
“I—What?” Theora spluttered. “That’s—Isobel.”
“See you!”