Location: Alexis’s Office
Time: 5:42 PM; February 14th, 2108
Needless to say, my day hadn’t exactly gone as planned. And it seemed to be ending with me in a place I’d rather not spend much time in. If I was being honest with myself, it’s not like I actively dislike Alexis. Despite her overall disposition, she is my sister.
Continuing to love your family, even the eccentric ones, is normal after all.
She’s just a hard person for me to deal with, standing as the antithesis of everything I want from life.
It’s bad enough that our parents were unfortunate enough to have two augmented children, but she went ahead and made a name for herself. By the time she was in middle school Alexis was already selling information to anyone who could cash a check. When I was old enough to understand who my big sister was she had already destroyed any chance our family had to be normal.
The older I got the more I realized how fragile our existence was. We were trying to balance our lives on the head of a pin, all while Alexis ran around without a care in the world. Of course, things would come collapsing down at some point.
But she didn’t care. Alexis didn’t care about being normal, or anything else for that matter. She was entirely focused on herself.
Okay, maybe that’s not completely fair. Logically speaking I know it’s not right to blame Alexis for everything, but this is an emotional issue. With the way she lives Alexis is just too easy of a target for my misfortunes.
And I’m more than aware that my problems are incredibly normal, but what’s wrong with that? Who decided you need a tragic backstory in order to struggle? Normal people have normal problems. That doesn’t make them any less legitimate.
“So, are you going to tell me why I’m here?” I was surprised she didn’t start explaining things to me the moment we met. She was always eager to make herself seem like the smartest person in the room. “And while you’re at it, how about you explain who that kid is, and why you have it.”
I was pointing at a young child, maybe a year or so old. Its hair was a distinct shade of light blue, but other than that it looked like a normal baby.
What was Alexis doing with a baby? I can’t imagine there are many people who’d be willing to trust someone like her with their baby. And I’m not saying that because of her eye patch and the scarring surrounding it.
She was actually doing a pretty good job of covering it up with her bangs.
No, I can’t imagine who would trust an augmented information broker with a baby. Yet there it was, sleeping peacefully on a couch Alexis must have had moved into her office from the reception area.
“Ah, her? Don’t worry, you can ignore her for now.” Alexis tried to brush off the whole issue.
“Yeah, completely abnormal. You can’t just expect me to ignore a strange baby. The normal thing would be to tell me who the parents are at least.”
“Why do you have to be so obsessed with being normal when it comes to things like that?”
“Ha? You trying to pick a fight?” Being normal is normal, so of course that’s what I’d do.
“No, sorry. That was my bad. It’s bad manners to poke at someone else’s stigma, especially a mental one like yours.”
Was she trying to mess with me?
“Yes, yes, I’ll repent. In the meantime, feel free to make fun of my stigma. I’ve only got one eye left. I’m an easy target.”
She was definitely trying to mess with me.
“Alright, Alexis, fine, I get it. You didn’t bring me here to talk about the kid. What was it that you wanted?”
“To celebrate!” Alexis threw her arms into the air.
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“I’m leaving.”
I turned around and tried walking back toward the exit, but I felt Alexis pulling on my sleeve.
“Don’t be like that, today was a great day. The best day in the past few thousand years.”
“And why is that?” I could think about plenty of things that made today memorable, but none of them were particularly good.
Well, actually, I supposed I did get proposed to, but the jury is still out on that one.
“Because today I finally managed to clear the tutorial. Now we can move on to actually beating the game.”
“We?” Obviously I had no idea what she was talking about, but I couldn’t overlook the use of the word ‘we’.
“Of course. Your help has been instrumental up to this point, and it will continue to be that way going forward. Who knows how long this would have taken without you? Maybe it wouldn’t have even been possible.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sure, I’m ashamed to admit that I’d helped out Alexis on occasion by doing small things, like giving her the address that Olivia and I were taken to when Sara kidnapped us, but I’d never done anything so important to deserve that abnormal amount of praise.
“You haven’t realized this yet, Allison, but your augmentation is incredibly important. It’s capable of destroying the world around us.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t describe me as some kind of doomsday weapon.” What kind of nonsense was she talking about?
“It’s also capable of returning this world back to normal.”
“What? Tell me more. Forget about that last thing, focus on this one!”
“Have you ever thought about how contradictory your augmentation is?”
“Are you trying to compliment me or annoy me?”
“Compliment, of course. You have the power to override this unreasonable world.”
“So does every nullifier out there, what’s your point? My power isn’t exactly unique.”
“No, it’s unique. Those nullifiers are just a result of your power. Vestiges of previous versions of you from every other timeline.”
Despite the completely abnormal things she was saying, her voice was too serious for me to respond.
“Listen, Allison, what do you think would happen if you overpowered your augmentation enough that you accidentally blocked your own augmentation from activating?”
“Huh? Why would I-”
“Don’t worry about the why. You always end up doing it for one reason or another. I’m talking about the result.”
“Well, the result would be normal. Nothing strange would happen, I’d just lose the ability to use my augmentation for as long as it was blocked.”
“But if your augmentation was being locked away then what is keeping it locked up?”
I see. I finally understood the paradox she was trying to point out. If I was overpowering my augmentation it would have to be simultaneously active and inactive. I’d have to be using it in order to keep it unusable.
“Then it’s just not possible.”
“And yet I’ve seen it happen. The result is much more interesting than you might expect. In order to resolve this paradox the rules that govern the world break off a piece of your power that will act independently of your augmentation.”
“I don’t-”
“And then this is where the really interesting thing happens. After a few hundred years or so that fragment of you manages to siphon off enough of you to form a consciousness of its own. That consciousness will end up becoming someone that was never meant to exist in this world: a nullifier.”
“A completely abnormal theory. And even if it was true, the time scale doesn’t make any sense. There are plenty of nullifiers that are older than me, and I’m not even close to being a hundred years old.”
“If this was a rational world, then you’d be correct. But there’s a lot you don’t know about this world we’re all stuck in.”
Allison continued on to explain things. About the world, society, and about herself. She claimed to reveal everything about herself she’d been keeping hidden, but I’m sure she kept a secret or two for herself.
Not that I’m complaining. She already told me too much. If it had come from anyone else I wouldn’t have believed a word of it. But it was from Alexis.
And Alexis knows everything. She’s never wrong.
I was expecting her to tell me about what she had planned next, but she refused. She said she wouldn’t tell me anything about that until everyone had shown up.
That might have been for the best. I can’t even remember half of the things she told me. It was just way too much information.
But there is one thing I remember. The last thing she said.
“I told you. I’ve finally finished the tutorial. That proves that this game can be beaten. Now we can move to our real objective: returning this world to normal.”
Exactly. The one I thought to be my opposite was proudly declaring she’d return the world to its normal state. And apparently I’m actually the one with some super weird ability that’s creating paradoxes and breaking the universe. But at least it seems like I’m part of the plan to return to normalcy.
I think.
Maybe not. It’s getting harder and harder to understand what normal is supposed to be.
Alexis’s ideal went far beyond the normal I was familiar with. This whole time I was trying to settle for second prize. I was trying to realize freedom without ever leaving my cage, but now I know there is so much more out there. A prize that I didn’t even know I wanted. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. From the beginning, this was nothing more than a revelation on normalcy.