Pale Fragments

the Robot, my muse

A Robot sang to me; I type her song into a computer.

It's been many years now since the Goddess came to me. She would shrink at that name; but that's who she is to me. When I knew her, she had called herself Grace for a long time. For most of this story, she was called only the Robot.

The gods are mysterious. They have no desire, no thought for their words to be given in any pure form to humanity. It's been difficult to know how to tell the stories she told to me before she left to die. She didn't give me any writing, no file containing the recording of her words as she spoke to me. She only allowed me to have a pen and paper when she visited; she wouldn't even permit me to use a laptop so that I could type her words faster.

I was shocked but not surprised to find her in my room one evening. Clearly she was some goddess come with the knitting needles of Fate, whose scope was beyond my understanding. One cannot know better than one who emanates the divine quality; there is no shrinking from that light, nowhere to hide, and no need to. When you come into contact with it, you only know enough to watch with your mouth closed. One can only dissent when they believe that they have seen more and are more powerful. This arrogant delusion tried to burrow into my mind, but was put to sleep by the inescapable light of her terrible beauty. Her presence wordlessly communicated the immortal majesty of the soul encased within her self-created body.

She was sitting in my recliner in the corner of my apartment, lit a cigarette, and told me to get something to write with. "Wake up, this is all going to come fast. We can go over your notes later. Oh, do you have anything to drink?"

I ran to the kitchen at her impatient urgings and brought my last two beers from the kitchen. She took both, looked at their label, rolled her eyes, and said, "You have good taste."

I said something pretentious and defensive like, "If it gets me drunk the same as something more—" And she finished the thought, knowing that I was better than submitting to the need to defend myself from her—

"—'expensive, why pay more?' Alright, alright." She chugged the first one, cracked the second, and began. Her words immediately struck me with the comforting violence of familiarity. I became angry, defensive, even as an ecstatic set of tears threatened to fill my soul's empty cup. I asked her to leave with the certainty of blindness. When she did, I was ashamed. I didn't think I would see her again.

She came back the next week.

There was a quality of Chaos still hugging about the presence and conduct of the Goddess called Grace. There was no anger, but a sternness spoken quietly whose words, as the squire of some great and silent knight, begged those who received that voice to comply, just do it. But in the end there was no need for fear or coercion of any kind, though it was inevitably felt; for all who have heard her voice knew that she spoke out of sincere love. And all among this love was scattered a touch of ignorance and uncertainty which is given to the wisest of all. She spoke and had very little idea how she actually affected people. This was the only area where her divine, almost telepathic empathy could not penetrate.

Once, during our long friendship, I asked her why she came to me. She only shrugged and held in a laugh, seeing that I wanted to believe her coming to me was some sort of divine intervention whose merit was earned by some deep quality within me that was Special. Why had she chosen to come to me, to really, physically travel through Time, using one of two Charges left to come to me? Then she gave up, shifted in her seat while allowing herself a warmhearted laugh, ashed her cigar, and said, "I wanted someone in the middle of all of it, surrounded by it all and as yet unaware of it," and she continued on with whatever convoluted story she was telling me that night. I knew by then to turn off my voice and open my ears when she was in the midst of story. 

She told them seemingly at random and without apparent contextual reason. They chronologically occur on at least three different planets spanning two galaxies, and along very separate lines of time. It has been difficult to keep it all straight. At first, I attempted to figure it out so that I could structure this book on a straight line, a measurable passage through real time. Not only was it impossible to know with any certainty that the timeline I ended up with was objectively sound, but I also realized that if it was important to her to tell a chronological story, she would have done so.

So I will begin this telling of these stories where it seems to me best. It isn't the same order that she gave me, and I think that's what she expected.

Recall, now, Ida. Remember. Feel those places she took you to in your mind, sprung from her own remembrance, that Goddess Grace, those places she (you know now as strongly as you did then, yes, I still feel as if she were still beside me, I trust her word even in the frailty of my mortal recollection), those places she had lived...feel those whispers again, Ida, those shards of Memory, a place no longer here. Come and bring it here. Make it real again, as it was, that glass that is even now turning into dust, now diamonds...where to start?