Chapter Twenty-Six

"REPORT: SERVER NOT FOUND >> (ELABORATION) COMMUNICATION WITH EMERGENCY BACKUPS FAILED. (JUDGMENT) STATION S2-4QZ.7.668.3 HAS BEEN DESTROYED."

 

The Nard had come and taken the Von away yesterday. Apparently, they were moving to the Nard’s apartment a few blocks away. And it was all her fault. Like most things, these days. Callana stared at his empty room, with its barren walls and peeling carpet, furrowing her brow. This, apparently, was to become Callana’s new room. It only made sense, after all. If the room was going to be empty, then she might as well claim it—but the idea that she’d have to get a new bed… that hurt. Maybe she’d just hang in the air at night instead. Or maybe she’d give up this whole “human sleep schedule” thing. If she didn’t have a job anymore, why bother with those awkwardly brief nightly naps? Right now, she felt like she could sleep for years. That probably wouldn’t be good for her, though.

Turns out, her old lifestyle of sleeping and eating while floating in space was just… a bit of a coping mechanism. She’d spent so long up there, though, that she hadn’t even realized it. Being back in a society, even if it was a crummy society, had helped her a bit. Though it had dredged up certain things she had refused to let herself remember for a long, long time. Things she had no interest in reliving or revisiting. One of the nice things about losing your divinity was that it made the past feel so much further away. Even though she could see every moment in time as if they were happening at the same time, she didn’t live them all at once anymore. At the very least, she could count her lucky stars for that. Because the Callana she’d been before being called “Callana” hadn’t exactly been a great person. More of a… a force. A force of war, of vengeance, of conquest. So different from the person she’d let herself become.

And yet, so very, very similar.

As she laid down in the air, floating just above the space where the Von used to keep his bed, she reached into her fleshy pocket in the sixteenth dimension and produced an empty wine goblet. Chewing on its rim, she rolled over and faced the ground, roughly two feet below her. What a dingy carpet. Microorganisms crawled between its fibers, which towered over them like the branches of some massive, psychedelic forest. So tiny, so insignificant. She wondered: if she’d died fighting the Angry Thing that the Gina called “Bob,” would she have become as small as one of those? Would she care about them the way she cared about the Gina now?

Probably not. Amoebas only had tiny souls—no thoughts at all. But if she diminished yet again, would she even have thoughts as complex as the ones she did now? Compared to her wandering, stellar atrocity phase, the person she had become was a blip on the RADAR. And compared to her supposed ancient glory, conquering the Three Spheres and desperately, desperately trying to prove herself to… Them… her previous form was still nothing.

But who cared about power? About raw intellect? So, her original, living self was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, yadda, yadda, yadda. So, she could create infinite realities with a wave of her hand, then obliterate them just as easily. So, she knew everything—every thought, every feeling, every detail about every atom in every universe… that didn’t stop her from trying desperately to convince the miserable, wretched, soulless creature who raised her that she was good enough. That didn’t stop her from failing. From dying.

From sacrificing herself for an ideal she’d never truly believed in.

Sitting up, she shook her head. Why did she do that to herself? Why did she keep doing that to herself? Why was she moving out into another room when there was a person just outside the door who wanted her?

But… why would the Gina want her in the first place?

No, no, they’d already had this conversation! They’d already been through this! She looked back through time and watched the Gina tell her in quite certain terms that she’d be up for trying things out any time. And based on what she’d said to the Von a couple of days ago, she still meant it.

But again, that invited the question of why. The Gina deserved a person who she could relate to, who she could understand. Someone happy! Not some mopey, dead alien thing who had hardly even smiled in weeks. What had happened to the happy-go-lucky, innocent Callana from a few weeks ago? Why couldn’t she just be that for the Gina? That was someone the Gina deserved. But the weight of everything had just piled on, heavier and heavier with each passing day, until she’d become a shell of herself.

Then why not change that? Wasn’t the only thing holding Callana down just… Callana? Sure, the Von had gotten angry at the Gina because of her, but… wasn’t that really just because he didn’t like losing the old relationship he and the Gina had? Where she relied on him for emotional support, and he got to be the hero?

That was… a familiar dynamic to Callana. Maybe the Von just had some soul-searching to do. Maybe that argument wasn’t Callana’s fault after all, and it would have happened one way or another. Maybe it was a good thing, even.

And if that was the case… maybe Callana had something important to do.

For the past few minutes, Gina had been dicking about on her phone, playing some app she’d heard about online—some game where you had a little guy who kept jumping higher and higher, and you had to help him land on moving platforms. It was pretty fun—maybe these new “smart-phone” things had some potential after all.

“I don’t wanna move out!” Callana hollered, flinging Gina’s door open and barging in.

Gina jumped in shock, and her phone tumbled onto the floor, leaving her little jumpy guy to fall to his death. “Whoa!” she yelped, hyperventilating. She shook her head, trying to calm her nerves. Why was she so jumpy these days? Maybe the incident a few days ago had gotten to her a bit more than she thought.

“I want to not move into the Von’s old room! I mean, Von’s old room!” Callana said with a goofy grin on her face.

“Uh…” Gina said. “Hold on, where you gonna sleep?”

“I will sleep with Gina!” Callana said.

Darting her eyes across the room, Gina froze, the gears in her head grinding and slipping. “Uh…”

Callana hopped onto the bed, tugged one corner of the comforter over her lap, and got way too close to Gina’s face for comfort.

“Uh…” Gina stammered.

“Is that okay? I can make the bed big-ger if you want!”

“Wait, you can do that?”

“Pshh,” Callana scoffed. “Easy!”

“You couldn’t fix the TV, though.”

“The ‘teevee’ is com-pli-cated. There are little cir-cuits and wires and things that I did not know how they worked and stuff. Hmm. That felt odd to say. Was that pro-per gram-mar?”

“Uh, I guess? Maybe a bit awkward?”

Callana nodded, huffing to herself. “Bo-ra-ki is so com-pli-cated! Why do the thing words go before the doing words?”

“Huh?”

“The… the words that do things. What are they called?”

“Verbs?”

“Yes! I think. They go after the words that mean things. Not the words that say what the things are like. Those go before. Ex-cept when they don’t. Why? It feels so wrong!”

“Do things? Uh… I guess those are nouns. And adjectives? Yeah, I dunno, it’s just what sounds right. Adjective, subject, verb, direct object. Easy. I took four years of Niminvian in high school, but it went right out of my head, you know? It had such a weird order to it, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I think it was, like, verb, subject, adjective, direct object? It’s so backwards! How are you supposed to understand what anyone is saying?”

Callana cocked her head. “I like that bet-ter,” she said.

“Probably ’coz you’re Niminvian.”

“No, I’m not.”

Gina raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Right, you’re not.”

The two shared an awkward look for a few minutes, the conversation having mutated and run away from them. These odd moments had haunted them for days, and Gina couldn’t stand it. Why was Callana’s face still so close? Did Callana just not understand what that did to her? How instinctive it would be to lean forward and kiss her right now? Her lips looked so soft…

“So, can I stay?”

“Uh…” Gina muttered again, panic flooding her brain. What did it say about Callana that she was considering staying in Gina’s bed for… potentially forever? What did it say about Gina that she wasn’t saying no? Gina had gotten so used to her presence at night, even though she still felt awkward enough to avoid touching Callana as much as possible. She still clung to the edge of the bed, hoping the tempting risk of waking up mid-snuggle never became a reality.

“Gina?”

“Y-yeah?” Gina sputtered.

“Is… that a no?” Callana asked, her eyes drooping.

“N-no!”

“Oh…”

“Wait, no, I mean, it’s not a no! It’s a yes! I… I think…” This was going terribly. Gina pinched the bridge of her nose, gritting her teeth. “Yes, you can stay in my room. You just have to… make the bed a bit bigger, I guess, now that I know that’s an option.”

“Okay!” Callana said, bouncing up and down on the bed. She closed her eyes, blew out her cheeks, and strained for a few moments.

The bed stretched sideways, warping with a shimmer and bucking with the twangy sound of springs popping into existence. Callana’s end of the bed grew further into the distance, until the bed pinned itself against the dresser on the other end of the room. All in all, she’d made the bed three or four times as long—perhaps twice the size of even a king-sized bed. The room looked tiny in comparison.

“Uh,” Gina said. “That might be a bit excessive…”

“Really?” Callana asked. She pulled the similarly extended comforter around herself, wrapping herself in a Callana burrito and rolling over to the other end of the bed. It took a startlingly long time for her to reach the edge. “I like it. Yes. It’s big!”

Gina let out a soft smile. “Yeah, it’s big,” she said. “I kinda like it, too.”

“We can move the old fur-ni-ture to the Von’s room!”

Smirking, Gina scooted over to Callana’s side. “Yeah? And what are we gonna do with ‘the Von’s room?’”

“Hmm. Yes! We will make it a book room! For the books! And we can read them in a nice rock-ing chair.”

Nodding, Gina looked off at furthest wall. “Sounds pretty nice. One question, though. How are we gonna get the furniture out of here, since you pinned it to the wall?”

Callana cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“We can’t move it—there’s no space.”

“I can make more space…”

“Right… I keep forgetting that.”

Furrowing her brow, Callana took a deep breath. “Are you okay?”

Gina sighed. “I don’t know, Cal. I think I really have just… accepted things, you know? Like, I’m almost in denial about how much has changed. I still haven’t told my parents about what’s happened to me, and… dying was such a weird, painful experience that I’ve just kinda tried to forget about it. I mean… I saw a light. Does that mean there’s an afterlife? What is it like? If there is one, then am I gonna… never get to go? Am I just gonna be alone, forever, while all my friends get old and die? What happens when the, like, heat death of the universe happens? Are we just gonna float out in space for all eternity?”

Callana gave her a longing look, then stared up at the ceiling. “You can live as long as you want,” she said quietly. “But if you do not want to live that long, you can choose not to. I do not know if there is an af-ter-life anymore… but I know what it is like to live lon-ger than you want to. Watch-ing the stars burn out, then loo-king out at the dead sky and won-der-ing why you are still here. Yes. The u-ni-verses keep coming back, of course… they do not die forever, and you can always go to another re-a-lity while you wait. Hmm. But it is lonely. I’m not going to do a lie to you, Gina.”

Gina leaned back on the bed, shuffling one of her pillows under her neck until she felt comfy enough. “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if, you know, I wasn’t alone.”

Callana shot her a strange look. “Yes?”

“Yeah, if I had a friend with me. Or… maybe more than a friend. I mean, uh, you know… if that was still on the table.”

Callana pulled her knees up to her chest. Her face flashed a range of poorly hidden emotions.

“Is it? Still on the table, I mean?” Gina prodded. She was probably being to bold with this, but the tension had hung over them for ages, and it had to end one way or another. If Callana really wanted to stay in her room… she needed to have a reason. Because if things stayed the way they were, Gina would dissolve into a useless, gay puddle.

For a moment, no one spoke. Callana stirred a little, her lips twitching, but she refused to look in Gina’s direction. “It—I’m—it is… on the table.”

“Oh. Oh, wow,” Gina said. She looked around the room, a surreal pressure bubbling in the back of her mind. “So, uh…”

Callana groaned. “Whyyyyy? Why is it so hard to say I want to do the dating with you?”

Grinning, Gina scooted over, practically vibrating with joy. “You just did.”

Shocked, Callana snapped to attention. “Yes? I did?”

“Yes. Duh.”

“Oh.”

Gina nodded, pursing her lips. “That’s how speaking works.”

“Hmm. Yes. Well. I… might want to do the date again. With you. If you want to.”

“I could ‘do the date’ with you, too,” Gina said, her heart thundering. Callana looked like she was about to explode, and Gina was feeling it, too.

“T-then, does that mean,” Callana muttered, “that we could… uh… you know?”

“What?” Gina prompted.

Callana shakily held out one of her hands, her cheeks flushing beet red. She refused to make eye contact. With a soft smile, Gina took her hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. As she did, Callana let out a tiny squeak, somehow reddening even deeper.

The next few hours flew by as they sat there, holding hands, hardly speaking a word.