FFXIV Write 2024

27 - Memory

We do not know what made the golden circle that took Husband from Earth to Eorzea, nor the second circle that brought us from Eorzea to here. We only know that the first circle, at least, worked by copying Husband and sending a copy to Eorzea. This is easy to prove: we can call up who Husband thinks of as "Original Him" any time and talk to him, and see that their memories compare.

We do not know if the second circle worked the same way. There is no reason to think the two circles worked differently, but if there is now an Eorzea Him and an Eorzea Me, we do not know how to talk to them. I do hope that however it worked it did the same to both of us, rather than copying one of us and carrying the other. I do not like the idea of one of us left all alone in Eorzea.

However the second circle worked, since the first circle copied Husband, it means the man I am with in Earth has memories of things he did not actually do. He did not marry another woman, he did not have children, he did not injure his knees in sports, he did not lose a lot of money in a "real estate scheme" and so on.

But he remembers all those things, doing all those things, feeling things about all those things. He feels things about them now. There are memories that make him very sad at night, and there are memories he speaks of with pride. At first, when we got here, he would force himself to remember, to say, "I mean, he did that," but he mostly does not bother to do that now.

Husband once said that I am the result of every decision I made...that if I had done anything differently in my life he might not have found me when crossing the multiverse, but rather some other me that matched what he expected. And that perhaps another him might have found me.

But that means Original Him is the result of every decision he made. If Husband is a copy of him, is he also the result of those decisions? Is he made of the memories he has, even if they are not his? What would he have been if he had arrived in Eorzea without them? Simply another hyur that Hydaelyn had called?

He likes to think of things like this. He likes to talk about things like this. He makes me think of things like this. And when he falls asleep afterward, leaving me awake and staring at the ceiling thinking of these things, I remember that if the circles work the same then I too am a copy of Eorzea Me, and made of memories that are not my own.

Which keeps bringing me back to the question I had ever since he first showed me Final Fantasy Fourteen in that esports center in Tulsa, showed me a character that looked like me, running around in what looked like the Limsa I know...

Am I real?