Ryan and I came home to find preparations for a Christmas celebration in full swing. I was, honestly completely flabbergasted that I missed the plotting.

Sadly, I could only stand to the side and wonder what they all were doing. Finally, Natalie came over to me.

“Hey, what are you moping? It’s Christmas! Come, help to decorate.”

I was stunned when she pushed some chain of tiny LEDs into my hand.

“Ehm… what do I do with it?”

Her mouth literally fell open.

“What…? You drape it around the walls. Make it look festive. How come you don’t know that?”

I could only shake my head.

“Sorry, but… I am a Pure. We don’t do Christmas.”

Her eyes narrowed and hard lines formed around her mouth.

“Don’t give me that crap! I know that most Pure families celebrate Christmas in private! Just because it is not acknowledged in public does not mean you don’t do it!”

I felt a wave of sadness, followed by the all too well-known rage well up. I closed my eyes and fought the rage down again.

“I don’t have a family. I never had a Christmas celebration. Or any other celebration.”

She physically recoiled back from my words and opened her eyes wide.

“Fuck! Sorry! I… fuck, I did not know you are an orphan.”

I allowed a sad smile.

“That would actually be better. Orphans are treated relatively well in the Commonwealth. No, technically my mother is still alive. She is broken beyond recovery and simply keeps breathing, but that is enough that I am not an orphan and did not need governmental help.”

I felt, more than I heard, some of the fragile LEDs break in my hands, only realizing then that I clenched my fists.

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When I opened them again, we both looked at the mess, along with a few dabs of blood where the glass had broken my skin, and for a few seconds, we remained in silence.

“I… I am sorry.” It was all I could say.

In reaction, Natalie shook her head, as if to clear it.

“No… no, I am sorry. I should not have pushed so hard. God, I am so sorry that I brought up that memory. Here, give me that. We will fab new ones.”

I could only stare at her while she took the broken chain from me. Then I closed my eyes and had a heavy sigh.

“I… I am sorry, but I don’t think I am very good company at the moment. I need to be alone.”

I did not wait for her answer before I turned around, and walked out of the room. Somehow I found my way to my room, and when I closed the door behind me I leaned against it, slowly sliding down.

Even I knew that the rage, the desperation, the pain, and most of all the hate I felt right that moment were anything but the right emotions for Christmas, but I couldn’t help it.

While this short exchange with Natalie had ripped open old wounds that I thought had been scarred over long ago, I had become more and more emotional over the last few weeks. I had the feeling that I lost more and more of the iron control I had developed over the last 10 years. And that frightened me.

I could not give in to either of these feelings. I simply could not allow myself to go that way.

The pain and the desperation would be my undoing. I… if I allowed it to swallow me, I did not believe that I could ever recover from that.

And the rage, the hate… if I gave myself over to these, I would see the world burn.

After I don’t know how long I managed to get up, and tried to find my center again, but I lacked the focus for Tai Chi. I threw a few cheap baubles that I had found in the room the first time against the walls. That, unfortunately, did not help all that much.

Finally, for the first time since shortly after I got my first jack, I actually played a computer game.

Modern games were almost exclusively written for wearables and had a basic diadem option. The experience was, to be honest, severely lacking after experiencing the matrix with a jack.

But right now I did not care. I needed to kill things. The game was the 50th or so remake of a very old classic. And yes, the graphics, the whole sensory experience was lacking. But it satisfied my need to see a world burn.

Somewhat comforting that Doom 2242 was still good for that. After a while, I asked the VI to try to spruce the graphics up a notch.

The game had helped me in that way before when I had begun to extricate myself from the web that had caught me before my birth. It bolstered the tattered shreds of my sanity enough that I could plan again.

And it still had that ability. Sometime into my rampage, I encountered completely new maps. It was not surprising that maps existed that I did not know, but it was surprising as I had not downloaded them. But at that time, I had no clear mind to solve that mystery.

I just enjoyed the hordes of enemies approaching me that I could shred, rip apart, vaporize or destroy in as gory a manner as possible.

I honestly can’t say how long it took for me to let my blood lust out. I just know that at some point I was just exhausted. My stomach reminded me that I had not eaten anything since breakfast, but I ignored it, depending on the calorie reserve.

I just took a shower and then crawled into my bed.