draftware

the arrival

the arrival

sleepy. Oh, that's kind of neat, my words got broken up between the chapters. Oh no, why is this chapter titled this. Maybe James or one of them knows. I got up and found the three of them huddled around a table in the middle of the room drafting something. "Hey, um... did anyone else notice the name of this chapter?"

"...Huh. Y'know, afterward didn't actually use any chapter names, it was just chapter one, two, three, and so on. You know, its weird, we're on chapter seventeen of draftware at the moment. afterward was finally wrapping up the loose threads by now, we're not even at any sort of climax. Weird how that one works out."

"No, 'the arrival'? Whose arrival? Who is showing up?"

"Uh... huh. Yeah, not sure. There could be lots of different answers."

"We should probably go meet with Memmi. She wants this room preserved, so we can't damage this afterward... why not seal off the one below this one? Is there one?"

"There is, yeah. There's probably a dozen. We could do that, and that would solve her problem. Heh, maybe we could rip up the ceiling and make a sort of double-decker thing? But it is nice to be in this room, you can tell Tammy got a lot of use out of it."

James sat back on the dusty-but-otherwise-pristine couch. Flux was afraid to go anywhere, probably because she'd pick up all that dust and it'd just be a mess, and Scriff was dusting off Tammy's old furniture in the kitchen. The place felt a bit more lived-in, yeah, but unless she was only around for three days there's no way she actually used much if any of this stuff. It all seems so new, but so forgotten. I kind of felt a little sad. I mean, imagine being a dishwasher installed in a room that sits vacant, and then some girl shows up, and now you're all excited that you'll get to wash her dishes, but then she leaves and twenty years pass with no dishes to wash. Imagine being that bed, only getting three nights of sleep with your new tenant and then 7,302 nights of emptiness. Imagine being the table, nothing new being handed off to you in two decades after just a couple nights' worth of new things. It was tearing me up inside, all of these devices. If they could speak, what would they tell us? Would they just be glad to see a new human companion? Would they be upset we abandoned them for so long? Woul--

"YOᑌ ᔕEEᗰ ᔕTᖇEᔕᔕEᗪ. IT'ᔕ OkᗩY."

"flux... youre trying to help i get that but... um..."

i wasn't sleepy, but just like um... words felt heavy, i cant

"ᗯE'ᒪᒪ GET TᕼᖇOᑌGᕼ TᕼIᔕ TOGETᕼEᖇ. I'ᒪᒪ ᗷOOᔕT YOᑌ ᗷᗩᑕK ᑌᑭ, ᗷᑌT I ᑎEEᗪ TO KᑎOᗯ OᑎE TᕼIᑎG."

"yeah"

"ᗪO YOᑌ ᑭᖇOᗰIᔕE TO ᒍᑌᔕT ᖇEᒪᗩ᙭?"

"um"

"sure"

the little brain goblins gone to sleee good gosh that feels weird

...Alright, I'm back. I wish Flux would warn me when she's about to sap me of all of my energy. It's hard to move, it's hard to think, I'm kind of just a sleepy puddle when she does that, and I thought it was pretty clear I wasn't happy to be toyed with like this... I mean, I get why she did what she did, it's just... I... I dunno, it's a bit frustrating.

"So, um... were we going to tell Memmi about--"

"About what?" she said.

I'll never get how we end up doing this. Do I just black out until we get there, or...?