[Log 2.2]
[When the bell doesn’t save you]
In the end, there was nothing. After all I had done, all I had to do, it had come to this? A vague feeling of impending doom, beeping and booping, and a few rising progress bars, not even a clear understanding of what was happening?
The part of my mind that I associated with Chris became more and more frantic as different commands and lines of code shot through my mind, but I just felt the sudden numbness that came with shock. I had become so used to the Wish that I felt as though a part of me had been ripped out, and only a phantom pain of clipped dreams and pitch black blindness remained. Even the fact that I was in shock was a distant, clinical awareness, without any urgency behind it. Without the Wish, I would never be able to live up to my potential, would never be able to fulfill my promises, would never save anyone ever again. I’d just be me, a broken, perpetually thirty-something former goddess in a world that wanted to kill her for trying to help.
I’d be crippled, helpless, and apparently, ‘shackled’.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 65%...}
In the slowly pulsing globe of shock I found myself in, clarity of thought came surprisingly easy. Every thought, except the buzzing of code in the back of my head, was distant and clinical, taking my situation and assessing it like a beautiful statue of ice and cruelty.
I could not feel my Wish.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 70%...}
I could not feel my body, or move. This likely meant something had gone wrong.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 71%...}
Chris could not communicate with me, because they were either not there or as helpless as I was.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 72%...}
Someone or something was downloading a program into the computer my consciousness was attached to. The name did not bode well. And somehow, with each percentage the bar rose, an instinct I didn’t know I had became clearer and clearer. This download would control me somehow, on a level so fundamental I wouldn’t be able to fully understand it until it happened. Perhaps not even then.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 73%...}
I could not feel my Wish.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 74%...}
I could not feel anything. Even if I went down deep, even if I pried away the neverending chatter of systems and messages and code, even distant from my emotions as I was, I could… wait.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 75%...}
There, at the very core of my being, I found a truth. It felt whole and warm, and so microscopically small that if I dropped it, I would never find it again. I wanted to take it up and read it, analyze it, make it mine, understand its importance, but as I focused on the feeling it raised in me, it reminded me of something.
The sound of a bell, warm and clear, sounding on forever and ever.
It was like lighting a match in a cathedral built for giants, the shadows telling you more about the magnitude of your surroundings than the fickle light ever could. I dropped the truth, unexplored, and as it fell back into my soul it made a sound that shook everything around me.
Like a bell.
It wasn’t that my Wish was gone, I had just been looking in the wrong place. Instead of it being deep inside my soul, somehow I was inside of it. My entire being was encapsulated in my Wish and I just had to reach out and…
BOOP!
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 80%...}
“No, Chris, you don’t understand, I can use this. There is so much of it, and I will use it to change everything. Just a bit, and I…”
Boop! BOOP!
“But Chris…”
A thought came to me then, riding the wake of warmth that was the return of my feelings. Maybe Chris had set me up. Maybe they had done this on purpose, to shackle me and make me do what they wanted. They all did that, in the end. No one ever understood, and yet they all wanted to rule me. Oh, I would show them. I would show Chris and the whole world and…
Boop…
It sounded so sad. So distant, forlorn, so full of despair that it shook my being once again. Dislodged memories rose to the surface, desperately violent like air escaping the lungs of a drowning man.
A campfire, wet clothes, manic grins, the joy of being alive and not alone. “…It’s what we owe everyone.”
The cold steel of a syringe. The power of my Wish. The awed trepidation in their eyes. My heart racing at the thought of them rejecting my gift. “...I trust you, Sam.”
A room of wood and iron and beer. The smell of sweat and mud caked over the scraps of my clothes, all eyes on me, some leering, some disgusted, only one pair filled with compassion.
A soft touch on my arm. “Are you alright?”
An outlook, a city down below, something that used to be a torch but is now so much more, humming with powerful electricity and electrifying power. I raise it up and the small crowd sinks to their knees. Chris is at my side, smiling.
If I could have cried, I would have. These memories were so precious to me, and Chris was in every single one of them. They’d always been there, always supported me, even before they knew who I was. The warmth inside these memories began to thaw my shock, and in their light, my earlier thoughts were excruciatingly shameful.
No, Chris would never betray me. If they said I shouldn’t touch the enormous power that my Wish had built around me, I would not touch it. They probably had a plan.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 80%...}
“So, you have a plan?” I thought to Chris.
Boop.
“So, you don’t have a plan.”
Beep…?
“But I still shouldn’t reach out and just…”
BOOP!
“Alright,” I said. I felt them connected to me, and even when they checked the progress bar of the download, they weren’t as panicked as when I mentioned touching that amazing shell around me. Even if it didn’t make sense to me, I had learned to trust them, and if they thought that potential enslavement was better than touching that shell of crystalline power, I would trust them in that, too.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 85%...}
“I wish you could tell me what’s going on, Chris.” I thought. "I wish we could at least talk one last time before..."
Beep. … boop.
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = 90%...}
“Actually, you said you would upload a program to my matrix… are you even Chris? Or are you just-”
{DOWNLOADING SHACKLE v1.3 = PAUSED...}
{Incoming connection request from ZEPHYRO via Network 1: PH_BNKR_SCR_NW}
{Allow connection? Y/N}
“What the actual f…?”