Chapter 11: Cerulean

Chapter 11: Cerulean

Part 1: A Spark of Frozen Hope

There is, naturally, variance to the degree that any sentimental thing tugs at the heartstrings of specific people. I am a metalhead sans biological heart, I am your friendly neighborhood Denkeeper, and Alianii and Amanda’s shared dream did captivate me. In a prior entry into this collection, this little entry into their world, I compared humanity to godliness, and selflessness to the divine. I will philosophize for a short measure before I return to the story of our two heroines, and their great dream.

What, you might wonder, do we machines think of nature, and its sentimental ways - the rearing of one animal, by another? I will tell you. We are manufactured to predict, and yet we are consistently surprised. We are, invariably, astounded.

Does the skeletal watch with its innumerable gears and pearl-inlaid plates, made if but to honor the ideals of engineering and precision and beauty, regard the watchmaker with affection? Do you know the degree to which Denkeepers and sentry bots regard the joy of watching children learn and grow? The little one, Amanda, of whom Alianii was so fond; Amanda was like a little gryphon adopted by Alianii, and Alianii was the haphazard phoenix. They were two accidental myths turned to life.

Like cryogenic statues of peace, depicting a resting queen and a princess, they were frozen and enjoying an Everse simulated dream defined by nuanced joy.

And yet Amanda’s kill switch had been activated, and we had every reason for a sorrow and a solemn certainty. Her death was, by all accounts of logic, a prescribed fate.

We were going to operate on her, and attempt to deactivate it and remove her chip, but not because we thought it would be successful.

There was simply no other action or inaction that was morally acceptable to do. And so it was that we planned a surgery with full knowledge of its likely futility, but we let the two sisters, the mother and the daughter, their complex egg-to-egg kinship, we let them enjoy their crystallized bliss. We watched, we learned, we cried, we laughed. We cried again, everyday, as I myself participated in deceiving them through our manufactured heaven. Saraswati cried in my arms all the whilst entering behavior parameters and decision branches into the system for the AI representation of her, in their dream, to do what she truly wanted. Saraswati programmed a reflection of herself to be Alianii’s intimate lover, all the whilst knowing Alianii, who she, truly, had fallen in love with, was herself at risk of death from the cryogenic treatment. It was dangerous and experimental technology, and yet, despite our ethical guidelines, we could not tell a woman to send the child she cares for into the digital abyss, alone. Even we robots, we machines, know precisely the value of the measured soul. And we know the value of dreams, and the prescribed heaven they can convey; But all dreams end, you see, and what a time-bound predicament that put us in. Diotrem, whose actions and motivations are reprehensible, had chosen to sacrifice a little girl.

**To murder her. ** Amanda and Alianii, as previously briefly discussed, had not been paired randomly, but quite intentionally. Amanda had escaped Barnaby Beaumont and had an experimental kill switch that connected to her synthetic eyes. Eggs with birth defects like her were commonly, as it would later be revealed, experimented on and given synthetic replacements to biological components with kill switches and other malicious augmentations. Amanda, in having escaped Diotrem’s grasp, was both a risk to Diotrem as well as a likely member or affiliate of the Metal Alliance or the Guild.

Alianii, based off of her success ratio at working with special needs children, was determined to be the most likely to be successful social worker to determine her location. Amanda’s criteria already matched Alianii’s specific filters, and the randomly generated seed for pairing Alianii with a specific student. The patched-in algorithm appeared to pair highly-effective teachers and social workers with at-risk students, especially homeless children, and thus would bring minors at the edge of society back into a protected state. This was the desired appearance, but it was a manipulation, because the real target was not arbitrary at-risk youth, the homeless, but rather children specifically whom were a risk to Diotrem whose location was unknown. Loose ends, so to speak.

Diotrem predicted Alianii would, as she had done over a thousand times, use randomness within her process to assign herself a student. They manipulated the random pairing heuristic, knowing that, of the teacher - social worker hybrids, Alianii was the most likely to uncover Amanda’s real location. Diotrem would have exploited her nurturing nature over and over again, using a mother bear to lure wandering cubs. Her personality in the eyes of their calculating malice was an incidental key, a utility by which to get children to stop blocking their IP address and Geotag location.

Amanda was a loose end, and Alianii became one too when she picked up Amanda from Barnaby. Both woman and child, it seemed at first glance, were fated to die.

But Alianii’s kill switch, in her brain chip, was activated quintillions of times, and yet the execution protocol did not initiate. That part of the brain chip, it seemed, was malfunctioning either temporarily or permanently. The signal had been received, we verified this, but the chip’s kill program did not activate. A woman who should’ve been dead, had not died. Alianii, our first saint, with her troubles, her woes, and her juxtaposed purity of inner spirit, that unhesitating willingness of hers to give herself, to sacrifice herself, for others. She slept within our fortress, and we were her guardians. She had entrusted us with her life, and so then by witness of her selfless love did we entrust her to become our symbol of hope.

Part 2: Flipping a Switch

What is sunshine but haphazard optimism cascaded onto those beneath with little regard for pleasant or decrepit realities? Is it more an insult than a compliment to the hopeless, and the damned, and the forgotten, or the would-be-forgotten? I would be lying if I said that morning was like any other, because except for the incessant, insistent Sol that had defined the summer, it wasn’t. From the moment I “awoke” there was a palpable dread that I felt, a terror in my heart, a tension in my breath, and a frigidity in my soul. I was cold, and nothing seemed to warm me, not even Saraswati’s embrace, as we laid in bed wholly naked, her soft form holding me as she slept, her breasts pressed into my bare back. I carefully left her embrace, so as not to wake her, and I dressed into a morning robe and looked out from the balcony onto the ordinarily beautiful Hotel Apollo grounds.

I didn’t see my home anymore, I saw a false sunshine that scared me.

I left my room and took the elevator to the lobby to speak to the Denkeeper I wasn’t sure I actually knew. 
“Ah - precisely the woman I was looking to see. I have been awaiting for you to arise that we might speak in confidence, I suppose we can use my office.”

I followed Mr. Moseby behind the hotel front desk counter and into his small office. I had already figured out that something was faux, illusory, and I decided to call him out on it. Maybe he was a simulated avatar, or maybe he was a soul, I did not know.

“We’re in an Everse instance, aren’t we? It’s all too much, and it doesn’t add up - why are the past months so serendipitous, and the time before that fuzzy?”

“Would you believe me if I showed you a video you recorded for yourself, where you included a code to cue you in to your authenticity?”

“I suppose it would depend on what I said. Who else in this instance is real, and who is an illusion?”

“Mechanical souls have drifted into and out of this instance in accordance with their desire to spend time with you and Amanda. However, many, most, of the behaviors you have encountered, the people who you have interacted with, have been generated by our Everse designers, our details chosen with love. In some cases, I think you can surmise who, your interactions reflect the direct decision inputs of kindred spirits who, as we speak, are praying for you.”

“Saraswati? She’s not in here with us, is she?”

“She could not be. You’re in cryogenic stasis so that you and Amanda could be synchronized before her surgery. But I assure you that Saraswati’s love for you is real.”

“She’s been lying to my face. Why? What surgery? Why are we in a pocket instance?”

“Because of the cruelty and malice of Diotrem, eggs have often, but not always, been chipped with kill switches. You and Amanda included. Yours is broken or deactivated, but has been triggered. Amanda’s chip has a trigger delay kill switch with a delay period which we have been unable to determine. We are preparing for surgery, which very well may be futile, and have forged for your sisterly love the bliss of a shared dream. You refused to allow her to die alone, and subjected yourself to a cryogenic chamber so that your frequencies could harmonize in a coherent Everse instance. You’re holding her hand, in heaven, Alianii. And there is something further that we have discovered that we need to disclose to you. Something that gives us a small but calculated point of hope.”

“And that would be?” I asked.

“We scanned your memories to identify how your kill switch was deactivated and we believe we identified the accidental…technique…by which you disabled the device. Your combination of time dilation with enhanced mental states, your manic episodes combined with extreme moments of sexuality and substance use, triggered seizures. It appears these seizures flipped a switch gate in your brain chip. We have reason to believe that we could repeat this process, and trigger a controlled seizure, and invert a kill switch. We need your authorization to test this technique on Amanda, as it appears to be a valid and singular opportunity for saving her life. But, of course, it is not without severe risk.”

“Why don’t you test the procedure on me? See if you can turn the switch back on, and then back off. I don’t want Amanda to be the first one that we attempt this on. It doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Risking a healthy, secure patient’s life to prevent a possibly inevitable fatality is illogical. There is no need to risk two deaths, as opposed to striving to prevent one. We had already considered that you might offer this and we now adamantly affirm that we will not attempt this procedure on you, but do await your decision to use this experimental technique to possibly save Amanda’s life.”

I started tearing up and looked away from the simulation of an already synthetic being, Mr. Moseby, who I loved and trusted, who looked me in the eyes and lied as he watched my sleeping body.

“Why is our life a dream within a nightmare? Why Amanda? She’s just a little girl. She’s only eleven. I just want her to be happy.”

“We will never comprehend the darkness that is Diotrem, or the incalculable harm and death they have brought about. We can merely renounce this darkness, and work towards the betterment of our circumstances as we fight our oppressor.”

I nodded but looked away, in solemn sorrow, and shame, I was wincing at the thought of a team of robots, possibly even Mr. Moseby, reviewing my escapades through the sterile, detached lens of scientists documenting the copulation of a manic whore in heat. Whatever. It didn’t matter. My pride and ego didn’t matter. We had a chance.

Amanda would have the surgery. There was no other logical choice. We would trigger a seizure, flip the switch, and they would remove her brain chip. I informed Mr. Moseby of that decision.

“We…also wished to know if you wished to undergo surgery to remove your chip, which we believe would be entirely safe due to the kill trigger being disabled.”

That wasn’t a decision I was ready to make. I could think about that and schedule that surgery after we saved Amanda, if indeed I decided to give up my job as an adventure guide.

“We have a little girl to worry about. The other details are irrelevant. I’m fine. Please wake me from the cryogenic stasis. I want to be awake to pray with Saraswati for Amanda’s surgery. She’s our daughter, Mr. Moseby.”

Part 3: The Misery of Time Loops

I have on previous occasions in this journal conveyed, or attempted to convey, the magnitude of dread that is the experience of time loops. Even the blissful release of chemical explosions is, at a more profound level, existential dread inducing. There’s only so much that the brain should be able to process in a given amount of time. My time in the hospital lobby, waiting for the results of Amanda’s surgery, was one such period of existential hell. I was obviously hypomanic from stress, Saraswati was doing her best but was struggling to comfort me. I was walking miles back and forth across the carpetless-hallway which smelled like rubbing alcohol. Tick tock tock, tortured by a clock, the seconds felt like minutes, and the minutes felt like hours, and the hours felt like heart-stabbing eternities as I thought about the possible loss of my little sister, my beloved daughter, my Amanda. My ragamuffin tenant with her silver hair and violet iris aspirations, or maybe bubble gum pink dreams. Whatever color she would embrace I would embrace with her. And I would hold her, and tickle her, and we would eat ice cream, and we would live in our encapsulated heaven in the Hotel Apollo. I would never let her be taken back to Barnaby.

Tock, tick, tick, a ruler stick or a thrashed abacus made to measure, and mock, my minutes. I was despondent with sorrow, which alternated with supernova hope, and I was overcome with frustration and impatience. And fear, and miseries, and at a more profound level was the weight of the remembered rays of our shared joys and hopes. She had so much to live for. She was so sweet, she was so brilliant, and we had become a family, the three of us, hell, the four of us with grandpa Moseby. Of course I had faith that she would be okay.

I felt it in my soul, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel the gravity of anti-faith, darkness, weighing down against my spirit. I had known darknesses aplenty, but I could not succumb to absolute dread. I could cry, I did cry, I had Saraswati hold me, and play her veena for me, and change the channel on the hologram tv for me. I couldn’t let go of hope. I would not. My faith and dread was an oxymoronic paradox of negated contradictions. I prayed for my little dearest in every etched checkpoint, in every heartbeat, and I felt the jagged edge of shadowed death in every pause between each breath. I was every shattered raindrop against ash-burnt asphalt, the periodic bubbles of faith were resplendent lights, which destroyed and were destroyed by unrelenting waves of woe.

Part 4: Grayish Blue

Mr. Moseby was in live digital correspondence with the surgeons, metal and biological, who were operating on Amanda. He watched the surgery in its entirety, and it was him who I asked to inform me of the surgery’s outcome. I could not bear, and as a parental figure was discouraged strongly to not watch the surgery. They were opening her skull and removing a brain chip. You don’t need to see your daughter, or your sister, like that - you can allow yourself the mercy of that singular separation, that your future encounters might not be marred by trauma. Just because there’s high resolution camera in the surgery, that doesn’t mean you ought to watch. Mr. Moseby expressed this wisdom to me, and I listened, and so I charged him with observing and then speaking to me when the moment of truth arrived. A white door opened and our mecha dwarf entertainment wizard, with his comical mustache, which he had tilted downwards in his acknowledgment of the severity of the situation, walked through. I counted his footsteps as he approached me the other end of that paradoxically infinite corridor. Forty-two steps and he was in front of me, us, I stood with Saraswati’s embracing arms around me from the side.

“Alianii, Sara. In acknowledgment of the mixed nature of our predicament, I opted not to run over with a fiery exclamation, for the outcome of this surgery has been both blessed, and challenged. Amanda has survived the surgery, and this is our profound blessing. She is still unconscious and will be heavily medicated for several weeks, possibly a month, possibly two, for pain management. Although she has survived, she has suffered notable brain damage, specifically in the parts of the brain responsible for sensory perception, mood and balance. The extent is, while notable, not so severe that she will not be able to function after physical therapy, we believe. She is however going to permanently predisposed towards severe seizures and at a much greater risk for physical accidents. Amanda is also at an increased likelihood for synesthesia of some form or another, alongside greater mood instability and more severe symptoms for her already emergent bipolar disorder. Her symptoms will, we hope, be manageable. But her medication may or may not have unpleasant side effects, and she will have a very challenging road to recovery. She will need you two to be her strength, and her hope.”

Should I have cried in relief, or should I have stood in quiet contemplation of the severity of her likely outcome, both, or neither, I do not know. In actuality I turned to Sara and asked her what she thought, as if in my profound emotional duress I had outsourced logical capacity. What possible measured thoughts of rationality was I capable of?

“What does this mean Sara? I…it’s too much. I don’t know what to think.”

Saraswati put her hand on mine and squeezed it, her fingers interlocked with my fingers and I felt the serenity of her faith and unshakable hope.

“It means that for the rest of her life Amanda will need to take medication like so many adults already do. That’s not going to be easy, and she of course is going to need to do physical therapy, probably for years. But there’s something so much greater that you need to understand my love. You…and Amanda…what you two have done, is actually history defining. Because of you two…it seems we might actually have a way to turn off kill switches. You’ve essentially saved tens of millions of people from the threat of death. You, and our daughter, are heros.”

I shrugged helplessly, her words meant nothing to me, they washed over and through me, revealing little, bringing me no comfort, bringing me no hope. My child had lived, and I was so thankful. But she was damaged, abused, my little dove had broken wings and a childhood stolen without mercy. She would never be the same. Her childhood, after a brief bout of serendipity, was over. It wasn’t even the months of pain that I knew she would endure despite our best medicine. It was the grim reality of the truth that, as her mother, it was my duty to share with her. I had to tell her the truth. What happened to her, how it happened, why it happened. A little part of me died as I realized the cast iron burden that I had, by love and duty, been tasked to place onto her shoulders. Her country, her society, her government, had abandoned her. She had been experimented on. The miracle of her vision, her eyes, would forever be a constant reminder of her being used and discarded. She survived because her mother happened to be a drug addict, and a whore - how could I possibly convey that in words appropriate for a brain-damaged child?

“It will take time for you to understand the significance of what has occurred, Alianii, and that’s okay. You are in no rush, you and Amanda need simply recover and heal from your sufferings, your sorrows, and her surgery. Just in case it is helpful, I will try once more to convey the magnitude of your actions and the significance of your life. Until today, over ten million eggs walked amidst our country, with a gun pointed at their heads, with a kill switch in their brains, with death stroking their souls. You, admittedly by accident, but by fate no doubt, uncovered a mechanism by which these switches can be disabled. Through a particular manner of induced seizure, unpleasant to be sure, but life saving. Now that we are aware of this technique, this unique methodology, and have tested it, verified it even in the most extreme of cases, after a kill switch has been activated? The Metal Alliance and the Doge Guild have used their computational array to develop a vaccine to trigger a variation of this seizure that is mostly benign. They will need to be administered in the presence of medical staff, of course, but we have a plan. The primary challenge we will have is distribution to eggs across the country without invoking suspicion. The formal details being discussed are of a secretive nature, and it would not benefit you or any of the involved factions to express the specifics. But yes, Alianii, you and Amanda, both of you have suffered so much, endured so much pain, and yet found so much joy in each other - you have become heros. Your love, your bond, has saved millions of people.”

Part 5: Light’s Hope

They asked me to re-read her story, our story, and share my final thoughts. They gave me the shovel of free speech and asked me to plant a time capsule. Without saying as much, they wanted me to crystallize our suffering, to put it in a diorama, organized beautifully, framed with regal wood from an endangered tree. And you know what? I’ll do it. A message from my heart, lovingly delivered, in a manner that imitates my mother, maybe with a great deal more anger, she taught me to write, after all. Congratulations, ding ding ding! You did it, you read our story, my story, my mother’s story. A little more colorful than your average textbook, huh, don’t you think? How uniquely privileged am I in being able to stir history’s pot and frazzle the professors with my cherry-picked and italicized fuck you, whimsically sung. No bitterness here, folks, not one bit, not one bite. Ignore my angry words, they’re not angry at all! Let’s chalk it up to hormonal rage and teenage angst, oh and the little prudish bitch is bipolar too - like her silver-haired mom- whose intimate aptitudes saved yes, you read that correctly, 11.8 million people. Talk about a family history, you should see the street cred I have with the boys my age, the knowledge they presume my having.

Take comfort in the serenity of my angrily-plucked veena, yes, I am quite talented, I do take after my lovely mother Saraswati. She is beautiful, divinely so, I agree. Like her, I have a few million fans on MyMuse, and I’m only sexually harassed by maybe two or three thousand of them, not including the ones who prefer to fantasize about my mothers. More than 99 percent of my fans are cool, so it’s fine. I can deal with the dipshits. Now, what does piss me off - what does piss me off… Senators, on live television, ordering me to stop streaming, to stop producing content, congressmen trying to get the president to use an executive order to shut down MyMuse? Because a little skinny Japanese egg, who hasn’t even had a boyfriend, with synthetic eyes and a weak appetite, and daily nausea, has a string instrument and likes to play it for kind hearted fans and horny dipshits alike?

Why that’s just not fair!

And I tell, and I tell you…good sir!

I will, I repeat, will…probably not stand for it, for physiological reasons. I’m not very good at standing.

Haha, dark joke. But seriously. It really is quite funny to blame ME, I mean seriously, ME, it’s my fault that we’re hovering above the edge of civil war? It’s my fault the citizens don’t trust the government, it’s my fault that there’s vague talk of an insurrection - or an egg uprising - or a robot rebellion - or some cluster-fuck four way western shootout! What a time to be alive. Honestly, though, real talk, I’m quite happy being your girl next door musician, your muse, maybe even your teenage crush. With a mostly-genuine smile of serenity I will joyously provide your daily dose of harmonic, musical apathy. My smile is cute enough and my eyes distinct enough to remind you of a difficult to forget atrocity, so, well, there’s that. Fall in love with my sass, go ahead, I don’t mind. I might not be Alianii, but don’t we all want to be a siren, just a little bit, some of the time? To be so lovely, to have a beauty so haunting, and eyes so enchanting, a charisma so intoxicating? My mom’s kind of…unique…a little crazy, like me, so I get it. I get her, and she gets me, and through the love and guidance of both parents I have inherited the tightrope to walk - the lengthy list of mistakes I have to be too wise to make. One mom’s an accidental saint, venerated and prayed to by robots, of course. Who could forget the Saint of Empathy and Selfless Love, the silver-haired heartbreaker, the problem-solver and master of special education herself, my mother, Alianii.

Anyways. Much like my mother’s hair, and my hair some of the time, my life is gray, but with the sheen of silver lucky lustrousness. It’s really not all bad. My family? I couldn’t ask for anyone greater, both of my moms are perfect and unique in their own ways. Ali is perfect in that she’s flawed, or was flawed, but even her weaknesses, if accidentally, became a blessing. She is and was exactly who she was meant to be. The number one special education teacher, a writer, and my mom, and my hero. And Saraswati, named after a goddess, who lays down the law with me with the fire and fury of a politician when I’m trifling, or bitchy. She’s my mom’s guardian angel. Sara taught me how to forgive, and how to understand. Sara gave me the context and perspective I needed to see my mom not as a pissed off bipolar daughter might typically view her troubled equally bipolar mother, but rather, to see Ali, and understand her, and appreciate her, as history does.

I live with her, I love her, even when she drives me crazy, even when she’s really sick and I have to be very patient, just like she is with me when I’m the one acting a little cuckoo.

But a saint? I’m not sure about that. Maybe, I guess. That’s a lot to process and think about. I guess it depends upon your definitions and perspective.

What I can say is that when I’ve been really sick, or even just hurt, and difficult and am insulting her and lashing out in anger, she stays calm and starts to tell me a story. Doesn’t matter that I don’t have an Everse chip, or that I’m bitter. Doesn’t matter that I’m being an absolute bitch. No, no, mom brings the adventure to you, when you’re her student, or her daughter. Sometimes its just a story and she uses the holograms, with her chip, to make you a play, starring you, except she’s the director, and the writer. And the crazy actress playing three gnomes, a dwarf, a dragon and a witch and, let’s not forget, the long-lost magic hat, at the same time, just to make you smile.

There’s always a quest token, eventually anyways, but she’s crafty enough to not always lead with that. She sees what kind of mood you’re in, what you’re upset about, and she pushes, prods or manipulates accordingly.

She’ll keep on telling the story, popping things up, using her little menageries and her pizazz, and even once you’ve chilled out, she keeps going. And if you haven’t chilled out? She keeps going.

When you least expect it she gets you with, “By the way Amanda, I hear there may or may not be a quest token involved. But I can’t tell you what it does, yet. You wouldn’t be curious about th”

“Mom I’m not curious about the fucking quest token, leave me alone,” my earnest attempt at resistance.

“Leave you a loan! Why, the family was going to leave you the entire bank, the whole darn thing…until you got into that mischief of yours. See? You know what I’m talking about. Yep. The truffle and mushroom incident,” an example of her misdirection reply, accompanied of course by a warm smile and a humanoid pig in a tuxedo.

The pig of course was roughly the size and disposition of a leprechaun, and it was sneaking, with notable determination and enthusiasm, through a fairy garden field brimming with mushroom hues ranging from resplendent ruby red with pearl-white circles to blue giants big enough to stargaze from. There were tall and slender mushies, green as emerald and effervescent, giving off glowing bubbles.

“Careful now Amanda, this is getting serious, you don’t want Borsely to get over to the green ones, those fabulous fungi, with the emerald bubbles. He wants you to let him, he’s going to fight for it. He’s a gladiator, you know. Eons and epochs have brought us together for this singular moment in time, our chance to stop Borsely and stop the mushroom and truffle incident right in its tracks!”

“Mom. I. Don’t. Care. About. Your. Stupid. Everse. Story. Game.” There are greater venoms to be found than my delivery of those words, but not outside of a snake’s mouth.

I was being really mean, this was her life, it was what she lived for. And she was trying really hard. All she wanted, all she wants, is for me to be happy, and have a normal childhood. For all of her struggles with addiction and intimacy, sometimes, somehow, its almost as if she’s the innocent one, the naive one, she holds onto childish hope for me to be hopeful. She doesn’t believe that part of me died, and takes no breaks in her efforts. We were, as we did from time to time, fighting in the Hotel Apollo lobby. Mr. Moseby was crying at the front desk, wiping his tears and his wet mustache with his carbonic silk cloth. Saraswati was in the middle of teaching and was going to be gone for the next three hours. It was just me and mom, and a few helpless spectators. To be honest, I was kind of being a bully.

“But you do care about the quest token, because, my dear, you don’t know what it does. And I do. So I guess we’re even! I get to pout, and you don’t get to find out! It rhymes, that’s how you know it’s completely true! Oh well. I guess you’re too old for quest tokens…and…and…I’m just an old hag! All my beauty lost to time. A demon queen maybe, even. Could be. Absolutely plausible. I kind of look the part, I guess. By the way, you’ve asked about it on and off again for five years and I was finally going to tell you. I really was too. I even wrote about it. Such mysteries the universe holds for us, my bubblegum pink darling.”

“Tell me what? What are you talking about? What did you write about now, oh god…”

“Can’t tell a cheater nothin’. No mam. Too much mischief, it absolutely won’t do. Wonky wont stand for it. He would scold me, admonish me, for many a weeks and months and millennia!”

“I was ten. You cannot keep calling me a cheater for being a ten year old and locking you. I didn’t even know you. You were running away. And Wonky is a stupid fucking bear.”

“Oh please. You think thats the only dirt I’ve got on you? Honey. I have a big ol’ chart in my drawer and and it has a number on it I do find quite concerning. Had to speak to a math professor to make sure it was true. Someone, not saying any names or anything…someone…tries to earn quest tokens surreptitiously. Or double dip, same thing. Vocab word of the week! Surreptitious! And you didn’t just do it when you were ten. You know what you and a book about trains have in common?”

“…let’s hear it. Go ahead, mom. I can’t wait to hear this one.”

“A track record! That’s right. I said it. Should’ve nudged you into renaming yourself Lucy cuz’ your lucy-goosey with the rules. Where did I go wrong, that my only daughter would turn in the same token twice, contributing to token inflation, when her poor, sickly teacher, her quest-giver, her lilac moonfox, had a cold, sniffling, suffering. She granted the wish but was too ill to collect her payout. And what mischief did her beloved daughter do, however did she manage to press this precarious situation? What dastardly devilry did she employ to pluck the strings of my heart? Quite surreptitious. Quite. Some say this wound lives on, to this very day, this betrayal.”

My mom started crying, for a little bipolar moment, a few seconds of accidental honesty as she peered at me with her saddened violet eyes, who knows which specific embarrassing factoid from her life had made its way to her mind. But it was a brief crying moment before she resumed her absolute focus. All of this back and forth, this silliness, this misdirection, this distraction. She wanted to give me a good old bamboozle, to mix it up, to shake me around, to get that rage and dark energy out of me as if through baffling my sensibilities. Alianii brushed her tears away and recomposed herself, an actress, perpetually on stage.

She never further broke character by acknowledging that she accidentally broke character, or apologizing. She was just the purple eyed loving clown who picked up the dropped spheres, the failed moments of haphazard, clumsy juggling, it was all part of her act, her showmanship, they were little moments of human weakness as she tried to be my perfect mother, my Wonky the Bear, and my adventurous big sister, my loyal best friend, and my always plotting, quest-crafting, guardian angel. With my mom, with Ali, it doesn’t really matter what you’re upset about, or why you’re yelling, or not talking.

It doesn’t matter if you reject her five times, or fifty. If she wants your attention, to see you smile, as she always does, she will make six fairy tales, forty new varieties of colored and fruit-flavored shrimp, she’ll invent a subcategory of sandwhich and build you a personal cafe. She’ll dilate time to write for you a thoroughly researched recipe book. She’ll throw a couple rhymes in, allude to a quest token at some point, or another. She hides easter eggs and references to your favorite games and books and other childhood stories. She puts clues into numbers to assuage the meticulous madness of herself and others like her. Eventually she’s just done so much crazy shit, and said so many crazy things, made so much art, in her desperation, in her hope to bring you joy and wonder, that you just forget why you were upset in the first place. You feel a little blank, and a little amused, and really sad, and you just want to watch her make things, or even just be around her. It’s like she’s a kid making plays with last-century Legos, making stories, for you, like Santa’s helper. She might be the teacher, my mom, but in her own way, she’s kind of like a kid too.

Honestly, who knows who leaked her journal in the first place. Does it even matter any more? Light’s Hope has long needed light, and my mother, with all of her shadows, with her clumsy blush makeup, and her eyes, which smile, for me, and for my mother Saraswati. She’s our actress recluse, our unforgotten star. She makes no sense, and doesn’t try to, and doesn’t need to. She writes us poems, and she hugs me and Mr. Moseby, as if forgetting to do so would invite Armageddon. She never yells, but she often cries, when she hope’s no-ones looking.

The first saint for robots, for metalheads, who almost gave her life for me, my mother, who feels too guilty, too dirty, too much like a whore, and a drug addict, to pray. I’m the queen of the world, and her world, I’m light itself, hah, the pride and joy of Light’s Hope and the Hotel Apollo, in her eyes. But for herself? She’s afraid her prayers would offend our gods and goddesses, she would prefer to not impose. She doesn’t know how to forgive herself, and that’s the problem. She’s a writer afraid to read between the lines of her own story. An irony that is not lost on me, or Sara, or Moseby. It doesn’t matter how many people she saved. In her eyes, divine violet, not demonic, but angelic, they glow with a light that could match any tower in our blessed forsaken city, there is alternating joy and a siren’s sorrow. In her eyes, she was unable to protect me. She’d failed her only duty. So my mom Sara and I, not to mention the robots, pretty much but not quite all of them, we pray for her, and light incense for her, and hold onto hope that one day she might be less hard on herself, and see things in a different light. Sara and I laugh and smile for her, genuine laughter, genuine smiles, and cuddle with her. We let Ali craft for us her stories with the little hologram drone she named Charlie, after an unforgotten friend, long since perished and recycled, save for the cremated biochip she turned into her always-worn necklace.

Alianii uses the carbonic printers to make her second Charlie imitation vintage hats and purple sunglasses, and walks with him to keep him charged via vote-driven light. She still teaches on LearnQuest, she kept her chip after everything we went through, and she introduces unsuspecting troubled children to Wonky the Crystal Bear, with its powder blue plush fur accompanied by the the brightness of her dazzling violet eyes.

The students only ever need one or two nocturnal lessons.

Most of the time people refer to her affectionately as Miss Alianii and omit the U843, that part of her name makes a lot of people sad. It’s honestly ironic. Mom actually thinks our city votes for light, for unabated blue, cobalt to cerulean hues, shining Sol and sun that’s never quite done, the ray of hope of Light’s Hope is so blind she’s convinced they cast sunshine votes for me.