Entry 20:

A triple-edged straw. The paper reveals my imminent fate, the aisles I shall traverse, the items I must pick up. “Best tower ever” hole-less mug. The shopping cart refused most lists I picked up, rolling away whenever I tried to grab one it disliked. Painkillers: Ibuprofen 200 mg/ground glass 400 mg. I’d say most of the items on the list don’t make sense, but their faults align too perfectly for that to be the case. A drill made of soap. These items are straight out unusable for their intended purposes, not merely inconvenient. A thermometer whose minimum temperature is above its melting point. The list goes on and on, and the last item seems the most difficult to find. The heart of a sailor whose dream was to catch a pink nautilus and died without ever fulfilling such dream. To my knowledge, there are no pink nautili outside of Ilucaris. But it is known that the dreams of men don’t obey the whims of possibility.

It’s undeniable, every item on this list can be found in this supermarket, for it seems to stretch endlessly. I doubt I can emerge back into the star’s surface, return there, or fall further into the core. The star has become the market, and the market has become the universe. And the universe is just another floor on the tower of all. This leads me to engender a new thought; one I have not had before, or at least forgot to entertain and keep. That maybe my statement above rings true not because in the wide world of men one could never find a rosy nautilus, but rather because no such thing as the outside of Ilucaris exists. The tower contains infinite worlds inside, makes and unmakes them at will. Maybe the world of men is but another floor, unknowing children of Ilucaris that think themselves different.

I push the cart along the aisles, searching for the signs that will betray the location of the items I seek. I soon reach the pharmacy section. I advance for a few kilometers down it, until I find the formulations with Ibuprofen. To my left and to my right stand walls of little would-be blue, pink and white boxes pile on the shelves, all of them with numbers, organized according to the complementary drugs and their amounts.

I see it. Three hundred seventy-one meters over my head, branded “Ibusilicatol”, a little box depicting a glass flower with a shattered petal. I kick against the tiles of the floor, propelling into the air as I extend my hand to reach it, but it seems it will not be so easy. As I accelerate upwards, the shelves elongate, keeping the distance between me and the minute object roughly the same.

Landing back next to the cart, it seems flying could be the correct approach. As I slowly hover away from the floor, the shelves keep up with my pace. I accelerate, and they do. I reach light speed, and so they do.

I teleport, and so they do. Stretch my arm as if it were made of rubber, and the shelves keep running away into the infinitely distant sky.

Telekinesis. It works and the little box drops right into my hand. How despicable of a time sink, to make me try to use several of my skills just to fulfill a senseless caprice of this alien environment. At least it serves as a way to begin saying goodbye to some of them.

Once the box is dropped onto the cart’s basket, its entry burns out of the list with clean, white fire. I hope completing the list will lead to finding the guardian as I didn’t expect the descent would be this tedious when I first entered the tower. It, however, makes sense for my death, to which I renounced so long ago, is now something I have to strive for, to earn back. And Ilucaris cannot present any hard challenges to me so long as I preserve most of my godly abilities. Only annoying, long ones.

Given time is insubstantial to me, the length is merely a test of patience, and my patience is still that of a god. The bothersome nature of said tasks, though, can still be considered an admirable attempt on the spire’s part to save her son. Yet, and this one’s for you, Ilucaris: I deserve completion. Closure. Not all your sons you can save. Maybe not even one.

The next aisle I find is the crockery and cutlery one. The straw and the mug should be somewhere around this section. I will retrieve them with the same method, if possible, and if necessary.

I have the straw. It was showcased a mere hundred paces into the aisle. Its edges would cut any lips that dared suck on it. If it were not made of plasma, it would boast a precious metallic sheen. I shove one of its ends into the ibuprofen’s box so it wouldn’t fall through the cart’s lattice, and continue my search for the mug.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

That’s the mug, up there. I have seen the horrors of war, suffered them in the flesh, even. I have witnessed children being gutted, shot or decapitated in front of loving parents that got in trouble with the mafia. I have watched the decomposition of every species in the most varied conditions, taking in the smells, the toxic emanations without blinking or wincing. I have read the depths of the most depraved minds without twitching. And even considering all of this, the thing manages to be the most heinous piece of existence I have ever happened across.

I cast it against the floor with unparalleled might, and it just…bounces. Once and again it bounces anticlimactically, every cycle taking several minutes. I wanted to break it. There are more like it from where it came from, why can’t I destroy such a disgusting creation?

I move the cart so it will fall into it soon. Burn its name off the list, so I can move to the next item, whichever it may be.

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Entry 21:

In about six days of searching, I have found everything but the heart. yet that is about to come to an end, as in front of me open two paths: one aisle claims to hold Word hearts, and the other Story hearts. The natural assumption is that the one I need falls into the second category, and thus, this is the line of thinking I follow. I step in between the shelves, admiring the shining cylinders inside of which the organs float, and beat. Every heart at their own rhythm, ignorant of the beating of the others, happily dissonant inside its private container. There are no etiquettes or signs under, on or above the containers to identify them. How am I supposed to discriminate among them? To find my pink nautilus when I am blind?

I sit by the cart and caress it as if a dog it were. “Do you have any idea? Any input to provide? No? Well, you could be more talkative.”

The cart doesn’t answer. I don’t think it’s supposed to act beyond pushing me towards acquiring the list and some of the items.

Here I am, sitting inside a supermarket on the core of a star, seeking a heart made of plasma that supposedly belonged to a man who sought a pink nautilus tirelessly, talking to a shopping cart just as real as everything else in this world of star fire.

Each heart beats to its own tune. That must be it. They tell the stories, each one a different tale. But the code is not Morse, nor any other I know. I listen intently to the one closer to me, putting my ear against the fiery crystal, and cannot make out even a single fragment of the long-winded cycle.

I leave this aisle with a U-turn, entering the one with the “Word” hearts. The cart follows me as if leashed: I didn’t intend it to do so, but I don’t mind, either. Long strides take me deep into the cloud of labeled and unlabeled hearts. Their cycles are considerably shorter than the story ones. And most importantly, some tell what word they are supposed to say, having it stamped on the lower part of its container. This is just what I need. My hope lies in them using the alphabet in their code, to have combinations of beats determining a letter or a syllable. I need a suitable word to test this theory.

I spot one that says “Drudgery”. It fulfills several criterial of usefulness to crack the code. If the code is written letter by letter, then this word alone will teach me how to recognize D and R at first, simply from identifying the repeated patterns. Furthermore, the D is the first set of beats, and it should repeat shortly after. It should prove easy to isolate it. Once I know D and, by a similar process, R, Then I can identify the beginning of the Y patter, and as it has no letter after, determine it without the need to “sandwich” it between two known patterns. The U will be revealed simply because I will know where Rs end and Ds begin. Only the “ge” syllable will remain slightly ambiguous, then, as I will be unable, with this word alone, to make out the end of the G pattern from the beginning of the E pattern.

After a little looking around another vessel catches my eye. Zealous. This one is, while not a perfect complement, an acceptable one. A second E means I can make out the pattern for the letter, and that reveals the Z too. Given I know the pattern for the U, I can also isolate the beats that determine the S. “Alo” would remain ambiguous, but it’s three letters I can compare with a third heart or fourth heart.

In less than ten words, if I choose right, I should get enough study material to glean the whole alphabet. That is, if they work like I expect them to.

I grab the “Drudgery” heart and load it in the cart, to then drive away from the cacophony of beats. Once in the tranquility of one of the long halls connecting aisles, I place the container onto the floor, sit with my legs crossed, and listen. The melody of the D seems to be composed of four particular beats. Yes, as I suspected. Is R those other three, with the weak one in the middle?

Another cycle confirms it. This seems to be the way to crack the code. It will take some more hearts, and careful study of each one to engrave the patterns onto my memory. But I have the method. I have the time.

I’ll write again once I learn the whole alphabet and begin perusing the tale-telling hearts.