The next week is spent in much the same way as the first day. The Tuesday we watch no film, and we talk a bit less than the first, but it’s still relaxing and pleasant. We don’t discuss the plan much more. On Wednesday, we start watching Nosferatu but decide to turn it off and watch half a season of Friends instead. Not my thing, but it provides a bit of entertainment and keeps the conversation going, and it turns out Amelia is a really big fan of the series and has seen it multiple times. That surprises me, and Nikki and James tease her about it.
Thursday is a bit gloomier because we realise the next point collection event will be on the weekend, so we spend a while in the empty cabin above ground, looking up ways to remember dreams better – there’s no signal in the bunker, but it’s not much better above ground, so this is a very frustrating process. Since the collection events use our sleeping minds, James has a hunch that this will help us remember what happens. There’s a good chance it might be correct: Nikki mentions that various sites on lucid dreaming reveal that many people have experienced the same sort of dream – involving collecting points for seemingly trivial tasks in darkened versions of their home towns. They share a few common threads like they are completely alone, there is only one star in the sky (at most) and occasionally shadow presences are felt. It seems obvious that those presences are the non-entities, but no-one has anything very detailed to say about them, and despite a lot of searching, nothing come up that seems very useful
“We can’t rely on the internet anyway,” James remarks. “Society is going to change a lot in these weeks, if it doesn’t just collapse. I doubt we’re going to have the privilege of any signal at all after a while.”
On Friday we watch the other half of Friends, James goes out to purchase some new clothes, but is unremarkable otherwise. On Saturday, something very interesting happens: I go to bed early since I have a headache, and leave the others in the common room. I lie in bed bored, thinking about Nikki, the next collection event, and what we’ve found out so far. We’ve found one account of a person who supposedly interacted with a “shadow-y presence” in their dreams, but since it’s the only account we’ve found so far, we can’t be sure. They described it as hazy, scary, yet forgettable. As I wonder about the validity of that account, I hear a knock. Nikki would just come in, so it’s not them. I get up and open the door, and as soon as I do Amelia walks in and locks the door after. Odd behaviour, surely, but she doesn’t seem threatening.
“Um,” I begin, but she shakes her head and looks me in the eyes. Then, and I have to watch with my full attention simply because of how odd it is, she undoes her belt and her trousers drop down. She isn’t wearing underwear; I see a small bush of hair, and below that, her strong, smooth thighs. Again, I say, “Um”. I manage to pull my eyes away and look to the ceiling instead.
Amelia giggles. “You don’t have to look, but I do want you to lick it.” She’s quiet after she says that, and when I collect enough courage to lower my gaze to look at her face, I see an expecting, slightly annoyed expression on it.
“I don’t … really want to.” She looks a bit confused at this. “I’m not into girls.”
Amelia bursts out laughing. “Oh fuck, I thought you were flirting with me.”
Since it’s all a misunderstanding I relax a bit. “I wasn’t. Sorry.”
“I can never tell sometimes. Are you and Nikki dating?”
I shake my head.
“You might want to think about starting. You’ve only got three choices of partner down here, and you just declined one of them. It’s a long time to go without sex.” She pulls her trousers up again and leaves. I return to my bed and read a book.
Later – but not too much later since we’re all going to bed early to counteract the lack of proper sleep we’ll be getting – Nikki asks what Amelia came here for. So, I tell them what happened, and they seem surprised, but accept it soon enough. We go to sleep, without any sort of agreement, in the same bed. This time I leave Nikki plenty of space.
My vision is darkened, and I can hear laughing in the background. I smell popcorn. I take my phone out and shine it forwards; I see a theatre screen, and to my side I see Nikki, perplexed – I feel the strongest déjà vu I’ve ever felt and then that feeling turns into some sort of memory. I have been here before. But I don’t know where I am or why I’m here. Did you lose your memory? Except that isn’t my thought. I don’t think it is anyway. It … came from inside me, but why would I think something like that?
Nikki stands up and helps me to my feet. They ask me: “Do you know where we are?”
“I think …” I look around a bit. The darkness at the edges of my vision has vanished. “I think we’re at the cinema. The one by the lake.”
“Do you remember how we got here?” I shake my head. “It must be the second collection event. I recognise all this … actually, we came here with someone. Something. Do you remember the name ‘Stranger’?”
I nod. “If I remember correctly … they weren’t human. A non-entity?”
“Nothing else makes sense.”
I remember to repeat my thoughts as I have them, so I hear my inner voice say: “You two have regained your bearings. I’ve asked the other ‘non-entity’ to wait. Do you remember them?”
“They were … odd. They made quite the impression, so yes, I remember.”
I’m given the feeling that the other non-entity is flattered – it makes me blush a bit and I feel like smiling. My peripherals grow a bit darker, but it doesn’t go as far as it went earlier.
No-one says much for a few moments. Then Stranger tells us that this has happened before. They tell us that soon after this is when people typically remove non-entities from their worlds.
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“Typically?” Nikki asks. “As in this has happened before?”
“Yes,” Stranger answers. “There were worlds for a while, then a period of starvation, and now there are many again.”
“What do you mean by starvation?”
“I used the wrong word. It is hard sometimes.”
Nikki nods. “We should check back the Board. There are probably new tasks.”
“We should discuss something first. Your intentions.”
I feel like I’m in danger and the darkness grows a bit larger. The feeling isn’t my own, but it feels strong and causes me to produce tears.
“We’ve learnt a lot of new things,” Nikki says. “But our intentions aren’t any different.” A safe answer, but Stranger wants things to be explicit.
“What were they?”
“I want to reach the top if I can. As long as there isn’t any opposition to that, I don’t care whether this place is filled with non-entities or not.”
“Some are hostile. Will you remove those?”
“If we need to,” Nikki tells Stranger.
“What happens when they’re removed?” I ask.
“They look for existence again. If they find none, they return to nothing.”
The tears come more strongly, but this time, at least some of the feeling is my own. Nikki has tears too, but they don’t even seem to be aware of them. They ask Stranger if they’re satisfied and they say they are. “I want to survive. That is all for now. We aren’t a threat to each other.” And then, more powerful than the sadness, relief. I’m so relieved, in fact, that I start laughing to myself, and the very abrasive, yet now familiar, ‘laugh’ of the other non-entity fills my thoughts. When it subsides, we go to the Board, eating sweets on the way.
The board is, again, filled with tasks. Stranger points to one in particular and Nikki reads it and tells us: “We get 599 points for finding and using the wheel to ‘push danger out’.” Stranger explains that this is the task which removes non-entities from the world.
“It’s a lot of points,” Nikki remarks.
“You want to complete it.”
“I want the points,” Nikki says.
“But it would be unfair.” Nikki watches my face as I say this.
“How does it remove you?” they ask Stranger.
“It doesn’t. After finding the wheel, you learn how to disconnect yourself from me.”
Nikki is silent for a moment, considering what Stranger says. “I don’t get what you mean,” they say.
“I said before I was a content of your experience. If I am removed from your experience, I can no longer exist in this world. Our existence isn’t our own; it is some of yours that you share with us. You are my host, Other’s host is Person.”
“I see,” Nikki says. “So, this task introduces us to a way to eliminate you as contents of our experience?”
“Yes. There is nothing we can do about this right now.”
“What happens to you when you are removed?”
“Nothing,” Stranger answers. “We return to nothing unless we can find some other existence to share.”
“It’s too risky,” I say.
“You don’t want to use the wheel?” Nikki asks me.
“I don’t want to abandon them.”
“Then we need a loophole. Do you think it will work if we ‘use’ it another way than by turning it?”
“It’s worth trying,” I say. Other Stranger feels a reserved glee, one that hides in my stomach, waiting for it to be completely certain that we are to be trusted.
“Then we’ll need to find the wheel. Let’s allocate all of the tasks first.”
I get the tasks: Gather the materials shown (the note is complete with some poorly drawn materials) and summon a guitar; name a fictional band and write down the sort of music they play; plan your ideal house, then find it. I take a notepad with me and draw an awful plan for this house while I look for a piece of wood, some nylon, and a hammer. I have trouble getting into some of the shops, but eventually I find a metal pipe to break the windows with, and I get all the material I need in a hardware shop. Once I’ve obtained it all, I find the guitar waiting outside the shop, on the ground. I’m a bit disappointed that materials didn’t fuse together, but I guess this is weird enough.
The house turns out to be in the middle of the road, a few blocks down from the Board, seemingly constructed from when no-one was looking since Nikki is surprised to see it. Stranger is not “surprised” exactly, but didn’t know that it would happen. By now Nikki has completed most of their tasks and is currently completing a survey on our experience so far. Of all tasks, they’re taking this one seriously and giving detailed criticism. While they do this, I name the band “Jesus Wubs U” and they play MEGACORE a genre who’s only defining feature is they play other songs at ten times the speed.
Nikki and I finish at roughly the same time, Stranger and Other Stranger – who I might as well just call Other – are already done by then. After we complete the tasks the other has done – causing a second house and guitar to materialise – Stranger and Other tell us they’ve located the wheel. They lead us to derelict brewery where it waits. It’s a very usual looking wheel – in fact it’s a wheel that came with the brewery. Except it looks a lot newer, and has several signs points to it stating “THIS IS THE WHEEL. TURN IT PLEASE.”
Obviously, we do not turn it. Instead Nikki sits down on their jacket on the floor – Stranger illuminates the area so we can see – and proceeds to use the wheel as something to draw. When they’re done, we check the books, and I’m unsurprised to find that our points remain 284.
“It did say specifically ‘to push danger out.’ I guess this was too wishful,” Nikki says. They throw their pencil on the ground. “We could turn it, you know. We’d just learn the technique. Maybe that would give us the points?”
“As part of our agreement, you should not turn the wheel.”
“Why not?” Nikki asks. “I won’t use the instructions.”
“Not now. But we must keep power balanced.”
Nikki nods slowly and agrees to not turn the wheel. They they look up at me and their expression changes. “You’re a girl,” they say. “I didn’t notice before, but you are.”
“I am?” I look down at myself. I’m not very different to how I was, but I have some shape to my body, very small breasts. I feel my face, and notice my jaw is less defined. My head starts to feel light and I can hear myself laughing. “So, this stuff really works then.”
“It does.” Nikki leaps to their feet. “I need to try something in that case. Punch me.”
“Punch you?”
“Yes. Fast as you can.”
“I don’t know if I can do that …”
“Sure, you can. Even if you did hit me it wouldn’t hurt too much.”
“Why do you want me to?”
“I should have a lot faster reflexes now. Fine, how about you throw something? Something soft?”
Other is a bit amused at this, and I can feel their abrasive laugh in the background of my thoughts. “My sock?”
“Suits me fine.”
And so, I take off my shoe, roll my sock into a ball, hop a few feet away and throw it towards Nikki. They catch it and throw it back. I do not catch it, but we repeat the exercise many times. They catch it 36/40 times (only counting the times when they had a realistic chance of catching it). A vast improvement over what their previous athletic condition was. We’re amused by this, and Other’s laughter has grown louder. But we grow bored of this, so I put my sock back on, and we head to the WHSmiths to finish up – Nikki completes the band task and is amused by how I answered it, and I complete the survey, also seriously.
In honesty, I’m still enjoying myself. The risks are higher than ever and it scares me that things might go wrong, but this is so much more exciting than what life was. If I died, I’m no worse off than I would have been. I guess if someone else breaks the system before we do and puts everyone else in a world of endless torment that would be a lot worse, but I don’t want to dwell on that.