QuestQuest

You are trying not to touch him in the bed. You are sharing a bed out of convenience, not out of anything. Of anything. You kept a story deep in your head that at some point you would fall into each other, eventually. That you would hold the same tension and snap together, eventually. Eventually. [[He is asleep.]]

With that behind you, you look around. The world seems kind of flat, doesn’t it? And there’s a definite border around your field of vision. Moving your head doesn’t make any difference. [[What am I looking at?]]

You’re stuck in a box. /Cube /Container No, not a box/cube/container, because boxes are three dimensional This isn’t a box. It’s just a square/outline/drawing/lines/arbitration. It’s not even a tangible square. It’s a sea of imperceptible little squiggles of zeroes and ones and nothing [[But it can't be nothing, you think, because you are here]]

You are suddenly aware of your tongue and how it sits in your mouth. It’s uncomfortable. You move it around, it’s still [[uncomfortable.]] [[My tongue...*is* weird]]

It feels like a defeat to admit it, but I don't know. I don't have all the answers. I said I need to believe these story patterns are valuable. I almost said ‘real.’ But that withered into obvious contradiction as soon as I thought so I figured why bother. But I’m asking you to keep going and not stop here. I’m asking you to invest in this illusion. I’ll put everything back in a second, but I had the need/the urge/the requirement to speak to you here. The box zooms in. The lines blur away. The box is a square. The world is back. You are in control/real/actualized/having agency. [[Your feet move forward, one after the other]]

I know. I told you. I’m saying that not about your character, or who you are in this story, but you, reading this. I’m using a complex but also woefully simple code of twenty-six symbols (give or take some punctuation and numeric symbols) to try and convey something sort of profound/important/not-a-waste-of-time/universal/[[human]] to you. I wanted to make this feel epic/huge/a crazy journey, but I only did that because I need this to work. I need to believe these story patterns are actually valuable and worth exploring, because if not, if there are no actual patterns, then what are we doing? Is everyone just lazy? Are we as a species limited to the number of ideas we can actually have? How low is the ceiling? [[But what do I do about that?]]

You remember climbing up the hill. But you don’t remember falling asleep. You used to climb up here when you were a kid. It seemed like all activities were outside and within walking distance back then. [[But that’s probably not true.]]

There’s bits of sky and air falling — in a kinder world it would be snow. But in this one it’s ash. The singed clouds are drizzling down all over the place. You shake your hands clean of it. You could turn around right now and try and put it all back together, rebuild the place, and in a few years, months even, maybe, you could tell yourself it all never happened. [[This place could be rebuilt exactly as it was.]]

But you’d be lying, and your lies would stick in your ears and blot out hearing much else. Rebuilding something requires it to have been built first, and then broken. So instead of moving back, or staying put and trying to salvage what you can, you kick the gas can away, put your gloves back on, pull up your gas mask, put on your goggles (safety first), and [[push forward.]]

You leave the building behind you and tuck it in with all the memories you’re walking away from at the same time. It all recedes, it all fades like a distant meal, converted now into energy and mass that keeps you existing. Living in the past means dying in the present. You keep walking, on and on and on. [[You don’t dare stop.]]

You broke through the sound barrier and you didn’t even notice. You were flying through space at top speed and focused on the edge of the beast flickering in/ and out of [[existence.]]

I promised/swore/implied heavily that I wouldn’t do this again. But I was getting worried and couldn’t keep away. We’re dealing with the unseen/random/not-quite random/unknown, after all. I have, at best, control over only half of the world. In reality/actuality/practice, it is more like at best one-third. [[But.]]

But I am seeing you and watching your path, and I am wondering if I actually am seeing this, or if this is just the black box after the plane crash. This text waiting inside this box (again not a box, but a square, not a square, but a window, not a window but a sea of code) — all this to say, I communicate with you but it’s one-sided. You cannot throw yourself into the writing process, only the reading process. And for that, I want to say to you that I am sorry. [[Why apologize?]]

It is dogmatic, is it not, to set this down as a gospel to follow: You will read this sentence, and then the next one, and then the next, or you won’t. I have summed up the entirety of human experience in those two choices. Which is unfair/greedy/megalomaniacal/not very cash money of me. [[I also can’t seem to keep away from you.]]

I’m asking you to reckon with the unfairness of this experience, with the totality of authorship. And I’m asking you to keep going anyway, even though you’d perhaps like different options/story paths/experiences/worlds/[[lives.]] Wouldn’t we all. [[Keep going,]] if you wouldn’t mind.

The surgery seemed like it was over quick but your body felt the time. You are starkly reminded that your limbs make up most of your weight. Moving them is a once-every-five-minutes event now. Your whole abdomen aches but the pain radiates from incision points. You are missing an organ and you feel like shit. You try not to hurry the process of waking up. You are loopy and barely sane. You hear yourself babbling. You keep remembering you [[need to get out of here]] but your brain keeps losing the thread of that thought.

You set your supplies down at a campfire and, for the first time in heaven knows how long, you have a moment to rest. You’ve got some fresh scars. Those will make you pretty popular. You feel your whole body pressing down, gravity like [[the Moon]], begging just to sink in to the earth and be not a thing anymore. You know you won’t listen to the urge, but you might? [[Maybe?]]

You could. [[But you won’t.]]

But you could. [[But you won’t.]] [[You think about it.]]

You decide you won't. So you sit up too fast and the blood rushes to your head and you swoon and almost fall. Jeez, what kind of life have you chosen for yourself here? Is this any kind of way to live? Other people don’t have journeys. Other people don’t pretend to be heroes. And here you are, the exception to the rule, apparently. It’s kind of arrogant, deciding you’re the only one who can change this world and save yourself, [[isn’t it?]]

Haven’t you heard of delegating? Haven’t you heard of friends? Well of course you’ve heard of these. But you don’t want to disappoint [[them.]]

Or disappoint [[yourself.]]

That’s a lot of pressure, haven’t you earned some me-time? You feel these thoughts sliding around in your head like the dregs of a milkshake. You push them back down. [[Save them for later.]]

You bury the box. Your backyard is full of vegetation so the new dirt sticks out and pulls your eyes down no matter where you look. You are surprised that the spot [[doesn’t bother you too much.]]

[[Home again home again.]]

You step through familiar skeletons of trees and [[familiar]] earth smeared with familiar landmarks and familiar ash. It’s kind of funny. A cosmic joke of sorts. You turned your back on the path and kept walking forward, and now here you are again. But it makes sense. The earth is a [[circle]] after all.

Well, a sphere, but basically the same principle — you walk forward enough you end up behind yourself. The scope and breadth of where we can go and where we will be and have been is, ultimately, sort of small. You retrace your steps without meaning to. Or perhaps you pretrace them. You walk the path you’ll one day walk with [[greater significance.]]

But here it is, the place of your past, here it was before, and here it is again, much the same but crucially changed by time and absence. Were the trees always this plentiful? [[Didn’t it used to be bigger?]]

You wonder to yourself as you walk through the place and see, like hung images in a museum, moments of recollection suspended and frozen. Each separate and sectioned off by the borders of a frame of understanding. And each being joined by the borders of the present. A [[journey ending.]] [[And staying.]] [[Suspended.]]

Thank you for playing QuestQuest, a semi-randomly generated Hero's Journey. Written by Cherrie Bluhd and DJ Plague Doctor Union Rep

He is not particularly beautiful right now, you think. His hair, frankly, is weird. And he is turned away from you and his expression is probably stupid. He is on the furthest edge of his side. [[He is trying not to touch you.]]

You must’ve done something wrong at some point. This is easy to think because [[you are always doing things wrong.]]

He went on a date, recently. His friend said that the girl had “crazy eyes.” This should make you feel good because he didn’t like her. They only went on one date. This makes you feel like shit. Do you have crazy eyes? Did he show a picture of you to his friends? What did they say? Were you even worth a picture? You turn over and try not to think like that. You really try not to think like that. You try not to touch him. [[You try to go to sleep.]]

You always hoped there would be some surprise at the top of the hill. Like maybe someone snuck up the back and planned something just for you. Probably one of those old, laughing souls that did things for strangers without recognition and populated children’s books that told you how to be a child. A surprise picnic, just for us, [[just over the top of the hill.]]

You were having a picnic, by yourself, before you fell asleep. You were hoping you could give the hill a last hurrah. It always felt like a perfect spot for a picnic. [[So make it happen!]]

By the time you wake up, the food is cold. Maybe you were more tired than you thought. You tried to make it a fancy adult picnic. You spent all day buying a fancy basket and making ratatouille. The sun is setting and you feel vulnerable. You can always reheat it in the microwave. You pack up everything and [[head home.]]

Your machine jerks and sputters. It isn’t used to [[going this fast.]] It heaves itself around stray trash, quickly accumulating a debt to time. Time is about to [[collect.]]

But just as you feel it all going to hell — [[BAM!]]

You ram into the side of the beast. It stopped. It’s staring at [[the sun.]]

And even though your ship is totally fucked up now, and this is your chance, you look up at the sun too. And it is beautiful. [[Beautiful!]]

And the beast flickers out of existence [[again.]]

But you’re still staring at the [[sun.]]

It flickers back. You don’t want to [[kill it.]]

Its eyes blaze in the light. Its tail whips back and forth. You line up [[your weapon.]]

And watch it slowly [[swim away.]]

You lost time. You slept or passed out for a while. You still feel like shit. You want to sleep. You want to leave. A nurse tells you [[not to get up.]]

You lost time again. You wake up at night. Your room is dark. Light sneaks into the room under the crack in the door. You eat the saltines and drink the ginger ale next to your bed. You still feel like shit. You take forever to stand, but you manage to gauge the drop from the window to the ground. Not even if your life wasn’t at stake. [[You sit on the bed with effort.]]

The door opens. A tall figure in scrubs takes up most of the doorway. They stand behind a wheelchair. You try to place them. They wink at you and point to the chair. You recognize them. You smile. You head over slowly, with effort, with intention. You sit down in the chair. You ride out of the hospital, to your friends. Free at last, [[free at last.]]

You breathe in the scent of dirt. You hold this scent up to all the others you’ve ever smelled in your life. You are glad to be able to smell today. You are glad to [[have little joys.]]

You do not think much about the box. You head inside and begin to prepare your breakfast. You cut apples and bananas as the water for oatmeal boils. You cut the fruit faster than the water heats up. When you no longer have a task, the box creeps back into your head. [[You let it.]]

You feel sad. You will probably cry later, and want to dig it up. You will probably be sad for a long time. You know you can’t dig the box up, really. The water has boiled. You [[keep preparing your oatmeal.]]

But you’re still staring at the [[sun.]]

But you could. [[But you won’t.]]

Thank you for playing QuestQuest, a semi-randomly generated Hero's Journey. Written by Cherrie Bluhd and DJ Plague Doctor Union Rep

You breathe in the scent of dirt. You hold this scent up to all the others you’ve ever smelled in your life. You are glad to be able to smell today. You are glad to [[have little joys.]] Wait where are you going, [[come back for a second.]]