Lavender: a Strangely Slipstream Novelette

Willing to Die

Annatalia nihilistically believed that Lavender, of all the alternate worlds in the whole Flexible Reality Field, should be done away with first, as a failed gruesome idea.

Its self-destruction was going to happen eventually as it became populated by more monsters that people grew. It had been a ridiculous idea -- deliciously fun for her parents to dream up, but it led to menaces like Sandcastle, and girls growing bad-taste vampire buddies in gardens that were evolving to cut off people's faces. It had to stop, and it might as well stop sooner than later. She lifted her chin like a toughie, saying, "Someone has to get it over with. And it might as well be me."

It wasn't her fault that interworld time sharing had to go. People should just take the space they were given and not intrude on Other Zone. Humans needed to face their limits, take responsibility, see that they were destroying everything and cut back on their numbers.

While the milder members of the Anti-Heroes wanted to simply shuttle Lavenderites off to other worlds, the radical complete annihilation option was up for discussion again at the meeting. Part of her thought that solution was the most responsible, considering the obviously stupid human race and its overpopulation killing all the species around them. They should technically, for the sake of universal harmony, die.

She girded her loins, trying to ascertain if she was strong enough to take the necessary steps to annihilate all the alternate worlds. She knew how to get rid of Lavender. She wasn't yet sure how to implement destruction of the entire matrix.

She'd had no idea it would go that far when she tossed that idea out to the group when it was first forming. People needed to stop being babies living in wish-fulfillment fantasies and just deal with the card they were dealt – one Earth, she'd boldly announced. A planet of limited size one should be able to fit into or die.

She was willing to die. She remembered how upset she was with humanity when she was a child as Earth had became too crowded, and the only place to sporadically put people was the Flexible Reality Field.

People took up less space on Earth when they popped off to the time-share world of their choosing. It had seemed like an egalitarian solution to offset people's addiction to having babies. But she saw through it, even then, the puerile reaching out to infect reality elsewhere rather than discipline themselves to live within the rules of ordinary reality. Always more babies. As she thought about them, she made an ugly baby slack look with her face, making a bubble of spit, in disgust.

Eighty percent of their time in the alternate worlds could be divided up at their leisure, a minute at a time here and there or all in one go. Most people worked out schedules and planned it all out. The wild ones, the Bohemians and drifters, theater people, retired millionaires, teen-agers and playboys didn't bother with that bit at all.

Some people chose to stay off Earth entirely, which was encouraged among the poor, especially if they were on Welfare. Taxpayers were encouraged by the government to maintain suitable ties with Earth instead.

Organized criminals planned to subvert the time-share-percentage-tracker that had been built into all human bodies as part of the implant. Some people agitated for more addictive Earth-time than their allotted twenty percent and they would do anything to get their way.

Too many of those succeeding in over-riding the rationed time would over-crowd Earth. So, they knocked off people who lived in the houses they wanted to inhabit. It was expected to become a big business for a while, as rumors said a backdoor had been sneakily built into the system to allow for just that corruption.

She patted down the dirt and petted the Singing Goat, which was upset by the Deerplant's death. She fought her impulse to show it how to shake off trauma by wiggling. The DayMare always tried to convince her that was a more wholesome method of getting away from her emotions than salt lick travel. The DayMare was "a pain."

That was a phrase Annatalia had learned on Earth, not something said in Lavender, and she had to work hard to banish it from her mind as soon as it entered it, for fear of cracking the world. She lengthened her neck, widened her eyes, held in her tummy, to look as ethereal as she could, to balance out that thought.

Taking the salt capsules left the self-unified, and normal, sane, predictable and measurable: all words that made her want to rebel. Licking salt was understandably outlawed.

However, some locations, such as in the home, and in leisure spas, it was done sometimes, especially among a certain personality type. The salt-merchants had an in with the government and found ways to make the police look the other way.