A two-pronged post today, for there are two points which I wish to bring up. The first is that it seems that V's estranged lover has become ever-so more focused; when she was getting ready to drive back from work, someone had painted on her car windscreen. TICK tock AROUND the clock is what was on there. Obviously, V went inside and asked to see if the vandal had been caught on camera, and had it cleaned and so on.
The CCTV didn't pick up who did it; it turns out that she'd parked her car in a blind spot, somehow or another. Given the red paint, it's a safe bet that it was that creep. This was yesterday; she's taking steps to see if anything can be done about it now.
Speaking of creeps, I shall recount to why I am posting this early in the morning. The answer is simple: another dream. Of the "alternate course of events", or whatever it called itself.
I found myself back in the void; this time, all was dark and obscured. I seemed to radiate light, for I could see myself perfectly well, despite the darkness. I checked my hand; four symbols, still etched in. H:DW. The meaning of the words eludes me still. Nevertheless, I looked around in the empty space. Soon enough, I blinked; and there was a figure, with it's back to me. Another being like me.
"What are you?" I asked, with a firm tone in my voice.
"I already told you, my dear Achromatic." The figure turned to me, a smug grin across it's face -- and a black blindfold across it's eyes, but it still seemed perfectly aware of where I was. It turned to me; I walked, and it turned to face me.
"But I fail to understand."
"Then allow me to explain once more; I am a could-have-been; a maybe; possibility. If you take the metaphor of yourself as a train, then I am you on another set of rails."
"Then why do you exist? If you are a me-who-is-not-me, then how can we both exist? I am the only me."
The blindfolded figure laughed. "You know nothing; you can understand nothing."
"Then teach me, so that I may understand," I said; this was a road I must explore, to find the knowledge that lay at it's end. After all, if this dream were to persist, then it would be wise to know what it was, so that I may eliminate it.
The figure raised her left arm, pointing dramatically into the nothingness of the void to her left. "You think this a dream, correct? That it is not real?"
I'll come back to what I think of that now later. But then, I said: "of course this isn't real. You're a figment of my mind, and nothing more."
"And you would be correct," she said, smiling. "Everything mental is unreal."
"Your point?"
"It is simple: what, then, is the past? And what is the future?"
"You're going to have to start making sense at some point or another."
The figure clapped once. "The past is mental; as you yourself know, you cannot change the past, for it is done and cannot be accessed. If the past cannot be accessed, then the only method in which the past exists is in memory, is it not? And memories are mental; therefore, the past is unreal. The argument is much the same for the future: the future is merely conceptualisation of what is to be."
I blinked. "That is nonsense; what I feel in the real world is delayed. Time is taken for images to enter my eyeballs and into my brain; from my fingertips to my spinal chord. Everything I observe is the past; the present is what is not real, for the present is always changing. In the time it takes to say that we are in the now, we have already gone into the future, and the now is thus then."
"Merely an extension of the present."
"The present is not extended; the present is a fleeting moment, constantly flicking forwards, into the future."
"You speak of this as though it were a line."
"But it is a line; it is not one which we know the course of, as the course is created as we progress. The future is unclear; the future is not here. But it comes into the now and leaves it, all the same."
The figure yawned, as if bored by me. Well, I should hardly say "as if", it was quite clear that she was. "That's quite enough of that, I think. All you need to know is that I do exist, and I shall never stop doing so." She kept looking at me, with the blindfold over her eyes. "You wonder," she pointed to it, "what the point of this is?"
"Of course I wonder; you bared it not last time."
"It is, haha, because I have learnt something of importance; I have brought the knowledge out into you, so that you know what to do when the time is right."
"What are you talking about?"
I instantly regretted it. She brought a hand up, and rested it on the blindfold; she tugged at it from the front, and the knot that held it at the back came undone, and the thing came from her face, and was dropped onto the floor before her - a somehow solid floor, despite the void. And on that face.... that face. When I say that the figure looked like me, I mean an almost precise duplicate. But now, it was a duplicate no longer. For where "my" eyes once were were a pair of empty sockets.
And I do not mean a neat, empty pair. It had been a messy job to, uh, remove the objects within the orbit. Even as the blindfold came off, a stream of blood came down from the eye sockets, trickling down past the chin and onto the floor. If you don't mind, I'll... I think I'll pass on describing the interiors. You'll forgive me, trust me. She -- that thing -- turned to me, and grinned.
"... what, why would y-"
"It will become clear to you, too," she assured me. "It must."
I, struggling to contain the urge to turn back to that horrific being, turned around; and I found someone else in the void. A third 'me'; this one blindfoldless, dressed as I had done not so long ago; when I'd prowled the streets to live. She stared at me, as if weighing me up. I ran over to it -- better her then that -- and stopped. "And what are you?"
Even as I spoke, the figure cracked, and began to slide apart, as glass would. "I'm what you left behind," it said simply, before shattering; glass rained upon the floor, resting in mid-air in endless air. And it was then that I awoke, curled up in front of my computer, half-way through typing this. I finished typing it (while it was fresh in my memory), then I stood up and walked away from the computer.
And I thought. And I'm thinking right now, as I'm typing this. Something is up, here. Something which I don't like.
-Achromatic Morality-
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