Chapter Twenty Aaron
When Aaron wakes up early, he feels pretty good. The last time he got drunk and forgot to take a no-hangover pill, he learned his lesson. This time he remembered. As soon as he’s dressed, he sneaks out of the apartment, making sure to not wake Five. He’s glad she was eventually able to settle down. He wants to get everything ready for the trip before anyone else gets up, so they can just head straight to the mountains.
Whenever he goes out to the woods, he uses one of the big vans from work to haul Runner in. His plan is to get the van and some food ready so that they won’t need to make any stops on the way. He wants to make sure to get a full day in on the trail. On his way down the stairs, he begins to wonder if he’s maybe getting too excited about the trip. They all did get pretty lit last night. He hopes Valerie isn’t going to be dragging her ass the whole time. That would be a shame. He wants this to be special.
He’s used to always being on his own, ready to rock on a moment’s notice. It’s been a long time since he has gone anywhere with anyone else like this, years at least. In an unshakable good mood, he barges out of the stairwell door and into the garage, headed straight for Runner. After having banged the stairwell door open so abruptly, it appears he has accidentally startled woman waiting at the elevator. One of her bags of groceries looks to have ripped open at the bottom and dumped all over the ground. Feeling that he is to blame for the mess, he starts helping her pick things up.
When she stands and looks down at him, he nearly drops what he has in his arms. The woman is Valerie. She has already beaten him to the morning, and even gotten some groceries for a picnic. He couldn’t recognize her in such plain clothing, or with such fuzzy hair. Seeing her without makeup on, or her hair straightened is incredible. Instead of the pure hotness that he’s used to, she shows the look of the spirited kindness that he sees in her.
Though she is a little startled and embarrassed herself, she grabs the collar of his jacket and pulls him in to her. Her warm soft lips firmly press to his own, and she kisses him. “It’s ok hon, I’m all right.” Her voice is silky and gentle.
“Sorry. I can’t believe you’re up!” he kisses her again and starts hurriedly grabbing more of the fallen items.
“I’m really excited to go on this trip with you. Since I met you, I’ve been thinking more about getting out of town, way out, like you do. I just don’t really know where I’d go.”
Hearing the very faint, but specific crinkling sound of hot exhaust pipes coming from the otherwise silent parking area, he scopes out the garage to see which vehicle is making the noise. There aren’t many combustion engine vehicles still around anymore, not in town at least. They have become somewhat of a novelty. By the sound the pipes are making, he figures it’s gotta be something with a big motor.
When Valerie notices his curiosity, she looks in the direction of her truck. Its parked over up against the wall in the back. Seeing where she is looking, he cranes his neck and spots the small lowered single cab pickup. The fat tires up front confirm his suspicion that it’s built.
“Who’s little pickup is that? I’ve heard that thing driving around.”
“Take a wild guess.” Her voice is a little mocking.
“He peers at her with a slight squint, wondering if she is for real. “Do you have any idea how hot you are?”
She has seen the same look from pretty much every male that has seen her and that truck together. That’s why she nicknamed it her little heartbreaker. “Speaking of which, what are we all taking to the forest?”
He points over to the big dusty tarp draped over in the corner. “My runner of course.” Clearly she is not following.
“Just the runner?”
“Oh, no, ha, I’ve got a big van too. It’ll be nice.” Women don’t usually respond to the word ‘van’ all that well. “Trust me.”
She grabs the bottom of her sweatshirt and holds it out in front of her, so they can place all of the fallen groceries into it like a bag. While he calls the elevator down for her, he takes a fob off of his keyring and stuffs it in her front pocket. “Can you check in on Five. I left her asleep and I don’t want her to wake up alone and worried. I didn’t consider she might leave the apartment on her own.”
“Giving me a key already?”
He winks at her, having clearly been caught. Being quite curious about Runner from last night, she waits around a minute longer to watch him uncover the machine. As fast as he can, he unplugs Runner from the charging station and turns it on with a voice command. In a comical mood, he tries to cheer her up with some silly antics. “You want to see him sit and roll?”
She actually does find it fairly amusing and smiles. “You really do have a thing with machines don’t you Aaron.”
She holds the elevator doors with her foot while watching him scramble off across the concrete on runner as fast as he can. She figures she can wait in his apartment and socialize with Five until he comes back. Clarice still has to work in a couple of hours and it will be best that she not disturb what is left of her sleep by making a bunch of noise.
When she opens the door to his apartment, she sees Five sitting at his desk. Her elbows are on the table and resting her head in her palms. Her fingers are wrapped up over her ears and are tapping along. She only slightly turns her face towards her for a second. The sunrise is illuminating her face with a warm yellow, glinting off of her eyes.
“Good morning Dr. Morgan.” That s all she says before returning her focus to the window again. There is no tone to her words, like she is not all there.
She wants to be more social with Five, but she doesn’t want to have to twist her arm over it either. “Can you help me with these groceries?” It at least gets her to come over, away from the window and look at her. “I’m terribly sorry for how things were at Werker. You weren’t the only one that was lied to.”
“Why’d they have to kill Five-One? She was my only friend. She never did anything to deserve that. All she ever did was stand up for me and take the blame whenever I was afraid.”
She hugs Five and holds her head to her shoulder. “She was tough Five, I’ll say that.”
“You all kept changing us, trying to take away who we were. She tried to get me to fight back too, but I was scared. All I did was hide. It doesn’t feel right, that I made it and she didn’t. I have you, Aaron, and everybody. If anyone deserved to be here, it’d be her. She tried so hard, but everyone hated her anyway.”
She can feel the weight of Five’s head growing heavier on her shoulder. She has to hold her up so that she doesn’t completely fall to the floor. She has become so sad that she won’t even stand up on her own. She leans back and has to pack her over to the couch to sit her down. Her eyes are just blankly staring down at the green fabric of the seat cushion.
Valerie wishes she could take her pain away for her, but there’s nothing she can do. There’s nothing anyone can do about grief. She is somewhat thankful that she never saw the good and pure side of Five-One herself. It would surely crush her if she knew what has been lost. Needing to bring Five out of her depression, she can only think to talk about Aaron.
“You know, before I really met Aaron, I thought he was kind of awkward. He wasn’t weird or anything, I just never saw him being social. I would only see him come and go. How come he always takes the stairs?” She nudges at her, trying to get something out of her. “I can’t believe you talked to him after he ran you off the roof that one night.”
Five finally glances up at her, remembering that night. She doesn’t say anything, but it’s at least something. She appreciated the fact that he didn’t intentionally meddle in what he knew was an important project to her. Yet, here they all are because Five had still gone out and found him on her own. “Why is it, do you think, that he came across Five-One, me, and then you like this. Do you ever wonder if things are supposed to happen sometimes?”
Five leans to her side, facing towards her a little more. “I don’t know how, but I knew he cared. Maybe it was his voice. He helped me see and understand what I have known and felt inside the whole time.”
After about a half hour of them talking about Aaron and her sister Clarice, there is a quiet knock at the door. Aaron slowly comes in, making sure he doesn’t catch the two of them off guard. Even though it’s his apartment, he doesn’t want to invade their privacy in case they’re talking about things in confidence. He is glad to see that they’ve both made themselves comfortable and are taking the time to talk with one another.
Valerie gets up a gives him a kiss again. She glances at Five for a second and then back to him before lowering her voice. “She’s been a bit down lately.”
“Yeah, I know. I think she’s pretty sad about losing Five-One. I’m pretty sure it’s most all she thinks about.”
She slides her hands down his forearms and holds onto his wrists before letting go. I still need to change, go and get her jumpsuit and a water bottle, and then I think we’re ready to go.”
“K, I’ll put the food in my cooler and uh, load Runner up in the truck. See you down there?”
She notices Five perk up a little at the mention of Runner. She even gets up and grabs her cord without having to be reminded. It seems Five can still pull herself together well enough. She was getting a little worried.
When she opens the door to her apartment, Clarice is already up. She has made herself some toast with jelly on it and is having it with a glass of milk at the kitchen table. When they walk in, she starts smiling about something, but won’t say what about. She wonders if it’s over seeing her and Aaron being so affectionate last night.
As quickly as she can, she changes into some shorts and a tank top, making sure to grab a hoodie in case it’s cooler than she’s expecting. By the time she is dressed, Five has cleaned the makeup off her own face and is in her old jogging suit. Clarice hands her Five’s water bottle on their way out and winks at her. She knows something is up for sure now.
Once they’re out on the road, Five becomes glued to the windows, like a child. She is constantly in awe of every single thing that’s new to her. She streams a constant river of questions the entire way out of the city, not even directing them at either of them specifically. Since Valerie clearly didn’t get enough sleep last night, he is more than happy to answer all of her questions. He can tell that she is very appreciative of his temperament with Five. She has been with her for a long time and he understands how her patience has leveled out.
He feels it was quite special of her to have gotten up so early for the trip, even when she really needed the sleep. Since they have a trek ahead of themselves, and will be on the road for a few hours, he suggests that she get some rest while she can.
Five picks up on the cue to be quieter and even stops moving around in the cab so much. She crouches between the two front seats and leans in on his armrest so she can look out the front window and stay close to him. In a quiet voice, to not disturb Valerie, she continues to talk with him while he drives.
On the highway, he has to make an effort to pay attention to the road. He finds his eyes constantly wandering over to Valerie. She looks so pure and beautiful when asleep. It makes him wonder just what all she has been up to throughout her life. After talking wither about their upbringings, she came off as being an ambitious person, focused on not straying from what she expected of herself.
He can’t imagine her having any big regrets in her life, but he has also learned to not make any assumptions about her either. As much as he enjoyed dancing with her last night, it has started to make him wonder who she really is. He knows better than to mindlessly project what he wants on her.
Over the course of two hours, they pass through almost a hundred miles of interspersed farm land and small towns before even reaching the tree line at the base of the mountains. It is still always a little weird being close to home. He wonders when he’ll ever go back.
He’s been driving as smoothly as he can for Valerie, but when they reach the end of the pavement, the noise wakes her up. He has Five help in pouring her a cup of coffee from his thermos and hands it over to her. She is groggy and stays pretty quiet for some time while taking in the beauty of the massive cedar trees along the roadside.
Absolutely everything around them is covered in leafy vines and thick bright green moss. The only two things that aren’t pure green are the road and what little of the sky they can see above. Valerie is in just as much awe of everything as Five is. He can only imagine what it is like to fall asleep in the city and then suddenly wake up to all of this. It makes him feel really good.
Once Valerie perks up a bit more, Five’s open enthusiasm returns. It was hard enough to explain what trees are to someone that has never seen one, but this is almost too much for her.
“So how come there aren’t any trees like this in Welan City?”
“Well, Five, it’s cause people are a little caught up in what they think is important and they forget about things like this.”
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Rather than holding his hand, Valerie has her hand on his forearm. She squeezes it whenever she see something neat and points it out to Five. “Look at the size of that damn tree! I didn’t know they could even get that big!”
“Yeah, they do. Not to be snooty, but these aren’t exactly the big ones. We’ll go by some about twice the size, even along the road. Pretty much the only good thing I can say about the government is that they have done a good job of managing the forests. There’s a lot of real old-growth coming back.”
Five is puts her hand on his wrist too and tugs at him. “What’s old-growth? Is it like when people get old, but with trees?”
“Kind of, but not really. See, trees, as they get older, just keep growing and growing. Some even grow faster the older they keep getting. Since these ones are real old, they’re really big.”
“How old are they? Are they as old as you are?” That gets a laugh out of Valerie.
“Oh yes, they’re old. I’m only forty two years old Five. The real big ones are probably all over two hundred years old. Maybe even three to four, if they were in a protected area from back before the continental countries were formed.”
Valerie is a little confused. “How’d the government have anything to do with this?”
“Oh, you’ll see. We don’t do logging like we used to anymore. That’s one of the reasons why I know this place so well. I kind of help. I work with the robots out here.”
“Huh? What the hell are robots doing out here. Are they on their own?”
“Yep, where do you think all the decommissioned war mechs went, Well, yeah, a lot of them were scrapped, but not all of em. They’re out here tending to the forest.” His head is bobbing about, looking through all the windows, trying to see if he can spot one close to the road.
“They can walk between the trees and drag out the dead ones from way far in without tearing things up too bad. They do everything from snap off all the dead and dry branches, to hauling out entire windfalls. There hasn’t been a significant fire in forever cause of it. All logging contractors do anymore is pick the trees up at the road.”
“K, but how do they charge up and stuff?”
“They burn junk wood in old-school boilers to power a turbine. Or sometimes they’ll use hydropower at the bigger creeks. It’s kind of funny coming across a charge station out here. It’s like seeing big robot hillbillies all hangin around a moonshine still or something.”
“Doesn’t anyone else come out here? This place is so beautiful.”
“Not really. There aren’t as many access roads or infrastructure out here as there used to be. A few people do live out here, but not this far in, not anymore. There’s no way to make it in the winter. Other people like me come out here to trek about, but they’re usually courteous, and try to go pretty well unnoticed. I ‘ve seen plenty of people on other runners out here, which is where I got the idea to get one. All the forest service guys have em.”
“So, what do you do out here, when you’re not working.”
“Over the years, I’ve made myself a nice little campsite, and even a trail that goes to some cool places.”
As they head farther up the mountain, the branches of the giant trees start stretching all the way across the road on both sides, turning it into a dim tunnel of pure lush green. Once in a while, they pass over a bridge spanning a waterfall. The farther in they go, the slower he drives. Even he has forgotten about the many sights simply on the way to his trailhead. Usually, he just mindlessly heads straight to it without looking out the side windows much. Valerie squeezes his wrist again.
“I’m glad we did this instead of going into the city. It’s a better world out here. It is pure, and that’s what Five needs to see right now. I needed this.”
“I would live out here if I could, but it’d be too lonely. I’ll tell you what, I’m really glad I could bring you out here. It makes a lot of difference being able to share it with someone.”
After taking multiple turns down many more miles of dirt road, he finally spots what he has been looking for. There is a large humanoid mech working at the edge of the road. It’s a good thirty feet tall and even still painted camouflage. Neither Valerie nor Five would have seen it without him directly pointing it out. Its legs are so big, it simply looks like another pair of trees outside the window. He stops the van on the side of the road and has them get out with him. He holds onto Five with an arm around over her shoulder until she understands to not get close to it.
Valerie has never seen an old war machine in person before. Except for the ones outside the precinct. Its body is angular and aggressive. “Look how old it is! That thing has solid actuators on it, and they’re on nothing but bushings. Are those chains, its tendons are chains? No wonder it’s so noisy. How is it still working after all this time?”
“Yeah, it’s a war mech alright. Well, it was a war mech. Can’t break em and you can’t crack em either! Still some of the best stuff ever made, I might say, even by today’s standards. Its had all of its armor stripped off of it so it can handle a heavy work load, but at least it’s still cammo! Almost no one knows how to work on these guys anymore. That’s why I get paid a special rate out here.”
Five was a little stricken by the size of the thing and is oly just starting to pay attention to what anyone is saying. “What’s a war mech?”
He and Valerie glance over at one another. He watches her shoulders drop at the thought of it. “It’s a robot that… back in the day, people made these extra big robots to kill people with, lots of people. That’s what war is. When people go to war, we kill one another, as many as we possibly can, and as fast as we can.”
“Holy crap! Why would you do that!”
He sighs, trying to think of a sensible answer for it, but there really isn’t one. “Sometimes Five, we hate one another so much that we do it. There are many reasons why, but it’s usually because we’re afraid, or jealous of the other. Kind of like how…” He sighs. “How Ray hates you, like we talked about. Sometimes people hate each other like that.”
Valerie is watching Five, to see what her reaction is. She hasn’t said anything, but it’s clear she understands. “You know how much a billion is Five? Think of billions of people, all killing one another until there’s only half of em left. That’s what happened. Our ancestors made this very machine, and thousands of others like it, to go into places like Welan City and kill everyone there. That’s what war is, and it happened right here where we are now. Hell, it happened across the entire world.”
Suddenly all of Five’s questions have dried up. She only stands there watching the robot with her hand over her mouth. She backs up a step and bumps into him. He wraps his arm around in front of her shoulders again, pulls her in tight, and looks down at her.
“Five, remember what we talked about, with Runner, and the others.” He points up at the mech. “That machine there, it had no idea what it was doing. It might as well have been a big stick to hit someone over the head with. The stick is not evil, just the person holding it. People can hate one another too, it’s not always between us and machines. Only idiots don’t like machines.”
Five is not as scared of the robot after his saying that. Her curiosity still gets the better of her and she goes a little closer towards it. The thing takes notice and keeps a watchful eye on her. It has packed out a large fallen green tree, stump and all. It looks to have gone down naturally and still has a huge root mass on it. The tree it is easily thirty inches across at the trunk and is a burden, even for a mech of its size to handle. The thing is busy grabbing ahold of the roots and tearing away at them with its clawed hands so that it can lay in a stack with the others more easily. He can see that the loud crunching noise is making Valerie a little bit uneasy. That, and the way it is looking at Five. She has no idea what it might be thinking. It’s a war machine after all.
By the look on Five’s face, he can sense that she has become enamored by the machine and its size. For almost a quarter mile farther down the road, she is still watching it through the back window of the van. In the rear view mirror, he can see the big grin still on her face when she looks back at him.
She climbs over Runner in the back and hunches down between their seats again. “Valerie, could I have been made to be really big, like that?”
“I suppose so, but then you would have to stay outside, and we wouldn’t be able to take you anywhere.”
“We’d have to put you to work too, like that one back there. That one’s not even all that big anyway, he’s just a lil guy. If Valerie had taken us all into the city today instead, you’d have gotten to see some that are bigger than even these trees.” He points out some real big ones as they pass by them. “More than three times the size of that mech back there.”
Five gasps at the thought of it, but then she leers at him. She doesn’t believe him and thinks he’s messing with her again. “Nuh uh.”
Valerie tries to hold back her smirk. “He’s not lying Five. There’s two of em right downtown. You’ll see em soon enough.”
After taking a right off the main road and driving down a hardly legible path full of ferns through the trees, he stops the van out front of a large overhanging rock ledge. It’s where he has made his camp site. It still looks nice and tidy, just like he had left it. The log rounds are all still standing around the fire pit and no one seems to have touched the firewood he split up and left in case someone did stay. The other two get out of the van and pack their things over to a nice flat rock that he uses as a makeshift table while he spends a few minutes unloading Runner.
Valerie checks to make sure her pack has everything in it while Five feels the surface of the rock above her head with her hands. He wonders what this all feels like to her. It must be like being in a completely alien world or something. Cautiously, she pats at some clumps of moss growing on the rock. When she feels that they are damp, she rubs the moisture between her fingers and looks at them closely.
“What does it feel like Five?”
Five only looks at him as if she didn’t hear what he said. Instead Valerie comes over and sits next to him. She lays her head on his shoulder and wraps her arms around one of his. “It feels the same to her as it would to you. The sensors in her skin, and even the signals they use are pretty much the same as organic ones. She can feel the temperature, the coolness of it evaporating off her skin, all of it.”
“Can she feel pain, like we do?”
“Actually she can. She is in sense a complete replication of human anatomy, in… every way.”
He can tell that she is holding something back again, even after everything. “Look, Valerie, I know she is really… really life-like and all, but is there something wrong here? I just kind of feel like you’re still guarding me from something. I won’t ask any more if you’d rather I not.”
She lets out a long and depressed sigh, and then hangs her head down for a moment. She’s weighing her thoughts and obviously has a lot of things to consider.
“I swear to god Aaron, you cannot, absolutely cannot say anything. I don’t know the whole truth even myself.” Almost half a minute goes by before she continues. Her tone is suppressed. “Five is not what you and I thought she was. I only found out myself last week. I swear if I had known, things would have gone a lot differently. I’m pretty sure her mind is a copy.”
“K... So she’s a copy… of what? Was the tech not yours? I’m not gonna tattle Valerie.”
“No, not that. SHE is a copy. HER brain is a copy of a real human’s brain, someone’s actual mind Aaron.” Her voice drops off till it is almost silent so that Five cannot hear. She used to be a real person, and she’s been remade, and brought back. She used to be someone Aaron.”
It does no good. Five hears her anyway. “I used to be someone?” She pauses for a moment, replaying what Valerie had said in her mind. “I… my mind is a copy of a human’s? what does that mean?” She is no longer simply curious now. She is demanding to know what she’s talking about. The sudden shift in her voice is startling.
“Five, under no circumstances are you to ever repeat or talk about this, you understand! They will kill you for sure if you did. They were probably going to anyway, but if they find out you know, they will for sure. Now, I’m pretty sure that you, the person you are, is not something we created at Werker. I believe you were once a real person, from I don’t know where or even when, there are no records at all. People have been trying to save the human mind from death for hundreds of years, but no one has been able to put one back together until now. I saw a layer of your brain my damn self. It was that thing Marco was looking at in his office.”
Aaron looks at her as if she hasn’t picked up on the importance of what she is talking about yet. “You can rebuild a human mind, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse?”
“Layer by layer, that’s what Marco said. I knew her mind was made of artificial neurons and all that, which is why it’s so powerful, but Marco said that he used a fractal patterning software to map out the system from scratch. He lied. She is a direct copy.”
“But you said she grew up from a blank slate. What’s the point if she doesn’t have any memory?”
“They did that on purpose. They couldn’t get the synapses yet, but they did it anyway. Memories are at the synapse level, and they basically reset that. Her brain was sliced up and it’s gone. She’ll never have her old life back, but she is still who she was, she can feel it, she has told me she can.”
While Valerie keeps Five reeling in the underlying details of what she truly is, it helps keep the two of them focused, and from getting too worked up over it all. She looks down at the dirt between her feet while she continues, clearly upset about it all. She’ll never be able to hand Five back over to Werker, anymore. It doesn’t matter that she’s in on the secret at work now. The others would still consider Five as simply a company asset and a giant walking risk.
“I was lied to about everything from the very beginning. For all I know, there could be more prototypes than just the two of you somewhere.”
In a scolding tone, Five interrupts her “The two of you? There is only one of us left, because you let the other one get murdered by your two asshole friends!”
Valerie pauses for a while, feeling Five’s mood starting to become pointed, like a knife. Valerie looks at him and he looks back at her. He wonders if she is thinking about what he is. Five looks like she might be, He can see her mind working.
“I was made from a real person that once lived, The same as you and Aaron?”
“You are not just made from a real person Five. You are that person, you always have been.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this? Why did you lie to us and tell us we were robots when we weren’t? You said we weren’t people. You hurt me! You hurt both of us! Did you do it because it’s ok to hurt robots, cause they’re not real!”
Valerie’s eyes are welling up. “I didn’t know Five! I never hurt you, don’t you say that to me!” She can’t hold back her tears anymore. She pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands and holds it to her face.
He can tell she knew damn well what was going on from the start. She would never admit that to Five though. He could feel there was something different about the prototypes immediately. She had been around them for over a year. She had to have known. He doesn’t blame her for putting up a wall though. The other researchers would surely have ousted her the second they smelled weakness.
Maybe she wouldn’t admit it to herself because of how far things had already gone. Kind of like with religion, no one wants to accept the fact that it’s all a lie, simply because of how much they’ve already invested in it. He feels for her. She has poured her hopes and dreams into the project, only to have it sit in front of her and tell her she is the monster. Valerie knows she let her guard down, and someone else paid the ultimate price for it.
Personally, he is not all that concerned with the drama unfolding between Five and Valerie at all. He is sinking deeply into the abyss of his own thoughts. His very dreams and ambitions have laid themselves right out in front of him. The key to cheating death has been at the forefront of his thoughts for so long, and now, here it is, sitting across a fucking campfire from him. He has envied the strengths of robots his entire life. They have always made him feel so fragile. It looks like he’s not the only one that has had their eyes on copying and recreating one’s self artificially.
For so long he has feared the dark and barren finality of death. It’s something that he feels has been chasing him down like a pack of dogs that he will never outrun. The one and only thing a person absolutely must do in life is die, and he hates it. Some nights, he will wake from nightmares of death, even more so lately. Even in his waking thoughts he can feel it coming for him. It feels like it’s always out there, unseen, unheard, watching him. He can feel it out there even now, a groaning stirring darkness, waiting for his time. Sometimes it feels close, and sometimes not. It’s wearing on his spirit, making him wonder if he is developing one of those absurd conditions people get.
He knows being afraid of death is only normal, but he feels it’ something he is always aware of, like he can sense it. He’s a grown man and yet he often finds himself scared of it for no reason, like how a child is afraid of the dark, or that feeling of not being able to see the bottom in deep water. All logic insists that there’s nothing there, but his heart pounds nonetheless. Whatever it is that he’s feeling, it’s always there, patiently watching him. It has begun to consume him. Whenever it finds him in his nightmares, it ends with him being mercilessly thrashed until there is no longer any fight left in him. The worst part is that it never outright overtakes him, but wears him down until he gives up. No matter how hard he holds on, he always feels shame in letting go.