Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Poisoned Memories

by kubasik

  Blood and gore filled my narrative. I was weary of it. It wasn't just that my life was filled with violence. It was that my eyes saw spilled blood whenever possible. My imagination ran rich with the stuff. When anything suggested blood, I picked up the suggestion and let it wander around my mind.

  Like the Horror in my head decades earlier. Things moving about in me. Old habits. Old sights. Old responses. I didn't want them, but they remained.

  The building was the only item of interest in sight, and if I was to do anything to change the circumstances of my life, I would have to approach it.

  Before long I realized I had misjudged not only the size of the island, but the size of the building. Both were much larger than I had originally assumed, most likely because I could not at first comprehend the size of the lava ceiling above me. As I walked on and on, the building loomed bigger and bigger. It towered above me. The pillars as wide as castles, high enough to reach the clouds. I had once thought that if I were to ever meet a dragon, the creature's size alone would freeze me in my tracks. Though the building did not live, its size had the same fearsome effect. At the base of the hill I simply stopped, my heart filled with dread. Some things are just too big to go near.

  But again, what choice did I have? I started up the hill, which was steeper than I had at first thought. After great exertion I reached the base of the building, which was made of white stones and several hundred feet high. From its top rose the pillars, which lifted toward the sky. As I leaned back, now directly under the pillars, the sight made me dizzy.

  Quickly I looked down at the ground but it took me a few moments to regain my sense of balance.

  Farther down I saw giant stone steps leading laboriously up to the top of the white stone base. After resting a bit against its wall, I walked to the stairs and began to climb. Each step was as tall as me, and had I not been a thief and used to climbing walls to reach valuables waiting within well protected towers, I might not have made it. The climb up the stairs took what seemed hours, and I had to rest several times.

  I could not see what waited on top of the base until I cleared the final step. When I had finally pulled myself up, my breath caught in my throat and I froze. Before me, dark and strange in the shadows of the roof, rested countless tablets. The kind on which I'd written my story. Dozens of them gathered in tall stacks in and around massive walls that rose haphazardly up to the ceiling. It took me a moment to realize that the walls themselves were also tablets. Piled so high and thick that they vanished into deep darkness above me.

  The sensation of being dwarfed, both by the pillars and now the stacks of tablets, only increased as I pulled myself up onto the top of the base and stepped under the dark shadow of the massive roof. As I moved further in, the slight sound of my footsteps and breath echoed off the bare stone walls. The walls of tablets opened up into countless doorways and I realized I was standing before a drunken and massive maze. The desolate, red-sky landscape behind me seemed a comforting memory now.

  As silently as I could, I walked forward, choosing one of the openings in the walls at random. Along the ground were scattered countless tablets, all inscribed with the brief summation of too many lives to comprehend. Soon the walls cut me off from whatever illumination had slipped between the pillars, and I walked in absolute darkness. With one hand against the left wall, I tried to keep track of the way out as I walked on. But I quickly realized that many of the walls were small islands of tablets, stacked up one against another and disconnected from the rest of the stacks. It was, in fact, not a maze, but simply a disorganized collection of tablets. I encountered large, empty spaces with small stacks grouped between larger stacks. I found stairs leading up to platforms, also made of tablets, that ended in dead ends. Retracing my steps became a common necessity.

  Soon I had no idea where I had come from, where I was going. The deep blackness poured into my vision, allowing me no rest from apprehension. I kept thinking some creature would leap out and rend me. But if there were monsters, they possessed a perverse patience. Nothing at all could be heard. I moved slower and slower, waiting for an attack. Surely, in such a strange and puzzling place, there would be monsters and guardians of some sort.

  Then I thought to myself—remembering all the things I had done in my life—what need is there of monsters when J'role walks the maze?

  Laughter, soft and distant, barely present in the air, distracted me from my thoughts. A woman's laugh. It came, it seemed, from many directions. As I moved around trying to find the true source, it stopped. I waited, standing in the darkness, my breathing as quiet as I could make it. For a long time nothing more drifted down the corridors. I thought I heard a sigh, but it was too soft to help me seek out the source. The waiting continued, and then I finally heard someone let out a gasp of "Oh!" followed by the sound of weeping. Moving quickly, I found an opening between two stacks where the sound seemed the most firm. Releasing my concern for subtlety, I moved as quickly as I could through the corridors, trying to find the source of the noise before the tears stopped.

  I heard the last few sniffles echoing down the corridor before the silence once more descended. I was close. I moved on in the direction I had been traveling. Thoughts of strange stories came to me, and I wondered if the sounds were the lure of a monster that would lead me deeper and deeper into the dark stacks, and then leave me there to die.

  But as I turned a corner I saw the thin trace of red firelight flickering against a wall much further down a long stretch of stacks. Anxious and frustrated, I did not hesitate, but moved quickly down the long stretch of stone tablets. As I drew closer to the source of the light, I could see how high the tablets rose above me. Two walls of tablets stood on either side of me, dissolving into darkness hundreds of feet up and seeming to lean into each other as they rose. I could not be certain, but it looked as though they reached higher than the ceiling I'd seen from the outside would allow. Somehow, the interior had grown taller and taller as I'd traveled deeper into the building. Contained here, I felt certain, were all the infinite tablets written over and over again by all the infinite dead.

  Overstuffed passions and failed dreams, glimmers of hope and joy. My deep terrors and evil deeds seemed as if they were being squeezed from me, and I wondered how I could have so squandered my brief stay in the realm of the living.

  Ahead, the firelight glowed brighter and brighter. Another bend in the corridor revealed another larger area. This one, however, contained a great many fires burning in urns crafted from bones. My eyes, accustomed now to deep darkness, could see nothing against the brilliant flames. But from that deep blackness between the flames I heard a woman's voice. With surprise, she said, "J'role?"

  5

  I stepped into the room, my eyes adjusting to the bright firelight. The urns, six of them, formed a large circle in a room made up of stacks and stacks of tablets piled up endlessly.

  In the center of the room sat a large table made of gray stone. Stone tablets were scattered over the table. Behind the table was a chair, also made of stone. A lovely woman, in her mid-thirties, rose from this chair and smiled at me. Her hair was short and black, her posture confident. Something about her eyes reminded me of Releana. Again she said,

  "J'role?" She smiled, a quizzical and pleased smile, as if she could not have foreseen my arrival, but now was so happy that I had, in fact, arrived.

  For my part, a strange emotion came over me. From the way she stood when I arrived and the way she said my name, I felt from her a great affection. And with this affection she gave me, she drew forth from me an equal affection. It seemed, somehow, that she was a daughter—a daughter I knew I'd never had. But she warmed to me with what I imagined flowed between parents and children who love and respect each other.

  "I'm ... Yes, J'role," I answered. Before I could phrase my question—who was she and how did she know my name?—she was out from behind the desk and walking briskly toward me. Her eyes were red from crying. She spread her arms wide and came to
embrace me. Pressed her face against my cheek. At first I did not know how to react, but she held me for so long that I felt compelled to do something. So I encircled her with my arms and returned the embrace. We remained so for some time, and I felt the weight of my life slipping off me.

  Eventually she stepped back, took my hands in hers. "You've been through so much, haven't you? I'm so, so sorry." She turned, and at the wave of her hand two chairs appeared, each carved of fine, shiny red wood. Leading me to them, she said, in an almost chiding voice, "Now. What are you doing here?"

  She motioned for me to sit, but I said, "You're Death?" She stopped, smiled. Nodded, eyes bright with humor at my confusion. I said, "I was expecting someone more—"

  "Evil? Menacing? Let me assure you, at times I am."

  I knew that the Passions, when they appear to people, take on different forms—forms that make sense, though sometimes obliquely—to the viewer. I asked Death if her appearance was like that.

  "Somewhat. It's very complicated." She sat down. She did not offer me the other chair, but seemed content to let me stand or sit as I desired. "Now, I assume that you ..."

  Abruptly I knelt beside her, took her hand in mine. I could not stop myself. "You remind me of someone."

  The touch of good humor melted from her face, leaving her sad. "I will look like someone you lost in life. I am Death."

  "I never met anyone who looked like you before. Your eyes ... They remind me of my wife's eyes. There's something about you ..."

  She looked down at her arms as if they were a new piece of jewelry or a gown tried on for the first time. "I look like a young woman to you? About the age of your boys? I may well be the daughter you might have had."

  "I could have had a daughter?"

  She shrugged, squeezing my hand. "Perhaps. Maybe with Releana, if things had worked out ..." Her voice trailed off. She obviously did not want to discuss what might have been.

  The notion of having a daughter filled me with both sadness and excitement. Sadness for the loss, excitement, for this woman seemed so confident and sure of herself. After a moment's thought, this confused me, and I said, "I can't imagine my boys being as sure of themselves as you are. I don't think I could have been the father to raise you."

  She held her words for a moment, then decided to speak. "You're probably right. I am a person you lost in life. Someone that could have been part of your life, but also that could not have been. I am the lost opportunity of your life."

  A sadness of a kind I had never experienced before coursed through me. I had always regretted my past. The possibility of lost futures had never entered my mind. As I looked up into her lovely face, I thought how wonderful it would have been to leave such a person in the world. To be remembered by people speaking of her—so strong and confident. Not singing songs of the cuts I made on the faces of my boys. I lowered my head, and tears began to fall.

  "Shhh, shhh," she said, soothing me. She put her hands on my shoulders and drew me close, patting me. "It's all right. It's all right."

  "It's not all right," I said. "Everything. Everything went wrong."

  "But you're dead now. Nothing else can go wrong." She said the words as if they were more of a comfort to her than to me.

  I pulled back. Still on my knees, I said, "That's why I came here. I must return to the realm of the living. There are things that I must—I don't know. Finish. Take care of."

  She smiled, knowingly, suddenly full of age and playful wisdom. "Everyone has things to finish and take care of. Life, by its nature, is incomplete. That's what I offer.

  Completion."

  I didn't quite know what she meant, but decided not to press the matter. "Yes," I said, my tone as tactful as I could muster. "Yes, well, I want that incompleteness again."

  She sat back. Eyed me carefully. Stood. "I don't think you do." She walked behind the desk, raised her hand. Within moments a stack of tablets appeared on the table. Among them were tablets I'd written out. But when she read them out loud, she did not read the words I had written. She scanned them quickly, picking out key phrases. "Betrayed by mother. Father drank excessively. Mentor tortured you during initiation as thief adept ..."

  "What you're reading isn't what it says on the tablet."

  "It's what I can see in your words. When you wrote your-brief story, you layered it with thoughts and memories."

  "Why do you make us write it again and again?"

  She looked at me with slight exasperation. "Each time you write it, you invest something else into it. By focusing on it again and again, you remember more and more."

  I realized I didn't care about the tablets, and pressed on with my need to live again.

  "No," she said. "You're dead, you're mine now, and you'll write out your story until the end of time. Or until I've figured you people out."

  "What people?" I asked.

  "All of you. You people. You living people."

  "What do you want to know?" In a moment of foolishness, I thought if she simply put the question straight to me, I could answer it and be on my way.

  She placed her fingertips on the desk, and stared at me far a moment or two. Then she said, "Why do some people press through adversity while others succumb to it?"

  “What?”

  She repeated the question.

  "I have no idea." I became incredulous. "What has that got to do with all those people trapped writing their stories over and over again?"

  "I don't understand people. I want to understand."

  So enchanted had I been with her mortal guise that I'd forgotten that she was, in fact, Death. Her reference to "people" snapped me back. "Is that why you kill us? To understand?"

  She looked down at the table. "I've been through this with you mortals before. You never understand. Neither of us should make pretend you will. But I have a special fondness for you, J'role. You have been through so much horror in your life, and still you went on. I'll be as clear as I can. Unless there is closure in life, unless there is death, there is no meaning, nothing for me to learn from. It is not simply that mortality gives all of you perspective—a sense that your days matter. It is that only upon someone's death can a life story be told. Until that point, there is always the possibility that the arc of the narrative will change drastically. What had before been mere insignificant details can suddenly take on major importance. What was once the major thrust of one's life can suddenly change into meaninglessness. Only in death can the proper study of a life be made."

  I took several steps back from the table. "We die only because you want to understand us?"

  "Yes," she sighed. "The Universe made you all, and now I want to understand you. The Passions don't appreciate it, but there it is. They would want you all to live forever."

  "What would be wrong with that?"

  She looked at me, confused. Smiled. "Wrong? I didn't say it would be wrong. It's just not what I want."

  "You cause all the grief among the living for your own curiosity? You kill people, leave orphans, widows—"

  She stood straight. "I don't think you should chastise me for causing grief, J'role."

  "No. I suppose not. So we die and then write out stories until you learn everything you need to learn from us—"

  "I never stop learning. I could read each person's story over and over again. There's always something." I slammed my hands down on the table. “I don't want to write the same story forever and ever. I must get back. You must let me out of this. I've been living in the past—in the pain of my childhood—forever! I need ... I need to be an adult. To live in the world, not trapped in the pain of years past."

  She sat down, visibly upset. "You should have thought of that before you tossed your life away into molten rock."

  "That was a mistake!" I said, clutching at my forehead. I wheeled around, overwhelmed by the insanity of the words, the ideas. "I want to take it back."

  "Death isn't like that. I'm not like that."

  "Please," I said very softly. "Peo
ple have gone back. I know it happens. A man I killed went back. Please. I want to do what you said. Change my narrative. I don't want to be trapped in the old story anymore."

  "Those people, those who return, have people who care for them," she said matter-of-factly. "Who work hard to make miracles happen."

  "I don't have anyone like that," I told her through clenched teeth. "No one will miss me."

  Her face softened. "I know, J'role. But you have a place here. I care about you. I really do."

  In that moment I knew she did. She really did. My story, my pain, meant something to her. And not just because I was an interesting subject for study. She cared about people simply because we all mattered to her. I had at first thought her search for understanding some sort of cold exercise, but I realized she really was filled with empathy and compassion. I felt my resolve weaken. If I went back to the realm of the living, I would risk failure again. If I stayed with Death, I would be safe. My memories would be of pain but I would know them. There was comfort in that.