Valence TOC
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A bitter, earthy taste fills my mouth. Blades of grass are tickling my face and neck. I roll over onto my back and stare up at the clear blue sky. The orange haze of late afternoon has been replaced by a brilliant mid-morning.
There should be sounds of birds or a breeze in the trees - even my hands pulling tufts of grass out next to me should be audible. I hear and feel nothing, only an eerie sense of the extraction of sound, as if it is being sucked out of the air before it can travel far enough to be heard.
I can tell I'm in an open space outdoors but, at the same time, my spatial awareness feels wrong. Somehow, my brain is registering this big field as being contained in a small, ordinary room.
At an indiscernible distance away from me, several blades of grass are bent over as a foot crushes them. This is the only sound I can hear as it ricochets off the dome of the sky.
I lay still, listening to each step as it gets closer to me. Then, the blue sky is blotted out by a feminine figure. I turn my head away and look toward the large green trees at the edge of the field.
"Paul doesn't want to see you," the woman says to me. "He said this should be a good place for you to rest before you leave."
"So he's kicked me out then," I mutter, still staring at the trees.
"What was that?"
"I'm sorry, can you help me up?"
"Of course."
The woman extends her hand to me and I grasp it, shuddering at the contact. Dread washes over me as I realize I'm going to have to look at her face.
Swinging my other arm around, I clamp down onto her elbow and yank down hard as I turn my head and lock eyes with - nothing.
The woman's face is a mass of grayish-orange, swirling, springy, dough-like flesh stretched over lumps, edges, indentations that would be facial features. The lumps on her face move as the cavern that would be her mouth opens up under the mask of putty. My stomach flips and I taste bile on the back of my tongue.
Buzz, buzz.
I swallow and whisper to the mask, "I need your help."
The slices of my head have fused back together, closing me off to altering Paul's figment. However, with the contact of my hands on this woman - a shadow, as we call the ones not worth the time to render with faces - I can find a weak spot.
Imagining my thoughts as fingertips, I wiggle them into the space behind the soft mass of tissue on her head. I push lightly, here and there, until I find a small gap. Pressing on the gap, I continue to wiggle my finger back and forth until I feel her go completely still. I can feel Paul through this gap, feel his hidden intention of leaving me one last way to find him.
"Where is he?" I ask the shadow quietly.
"I will show you," it replies in a lifeless tone.
A vivid image of a tall building with mirror-like, blue glass windows fills my mind. The building sits right in the middle of the downtown area I was just in.
"Of course. I was so close."
If I'm going to do this, hopefully one last time, I'm going to need a bit more range to work with and a lot more power. Closing my eyes, I form the ball of energy at the center of my forehead again, while simultaneously digging my fingers into the arm of the shadow. My mental fingertip jabs itself into the gap in the shadow's rendering, creating a hole large enough to force my will through.
The air around us becomes charged with electricity and I can hear the pop of static sparks igniting. My actual fingers have almost pierced the flimsy skin of the shadow. I continue to claw at the psychic hole in the figment until it has opened up into a bottomless gorge, and as the skin of the shadow tears under my nails, I shove my energy and myself into the gorge.
Somewhere, something releases a terrible shriek. Perhaps it is the wind, perhaps it is me, perhaps the shadow. Underneath the high-pitched cry, another sound rumbles deep.
Buzz, buzz.
This feels like a simulation and like a dream. Only one way to find out.