Welcome to my second Inside Out fic and the third piece of writing on my account. As always, reviews are appreciated and I hope you enjoy this fanfiction.
Riley Andersen never saw the Maersk, eighteen-wheeler truck coming. Why would she? After all, it had been a joyful evening for the twelve year old. Her parents had braved the rush hour traffic of San-Francisco to take her to see her favourite boyband: "The Vampiers" at Levi's stadium; a special treat. It was on their way home that disaster had struck. Mr Andersen had been driving comfortably with his wife in the passenger seat when the collision had occurred. The truck had skipped a red light, continued at speed and collided with their car head on. Surprisingly there were no fatalities, and five minutes later the family was rescued from the wreckage by the fire department. Mr and Mrs Andersen were relatively unhurt, having only received the usual cuts and bruises. Unfortunately their daughter wasn't so lucky.
That evening Riley was in critical condition. Two days later her condition was stable, but without any improvement in sight. By the end of the week, the doctors had finally broken the news to her parents. It was a simple yet heart-breaking fact: Riley Andersen was lost in a comatose state and the doctors had no knowledge as to when she would wake. The only consolation was that her brain was functioning normally, but this silver lining did nothing to quell the grief of her parents.
"Won't she get any better doctor?" Mrs Andersen asked through tear filled eyes.
"I'm afraid we can't be sure at this stage" he replied. "The nature of these injuries makes them unpredictable at best and long-term at worst".
"Please!" Riley's father pleaded. "Isn't there anything you can do for her? We just want to make sure our little girl is safe". The doctor, a young man in his late twenties could feel the sadness of both parents weighing down on him. He tried his best to comfort them, but he knew inside that it was a futile effort.
"We can make sure she stays stable... and we'll be keeping a close eye on her around the clock. I promise if she improves, you'll be the first to know. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some tests to run". And that was that. The confrontation was over, and Riley's parents were left alone with their emotions. Riley remained still throughout the ordeal, and remained still as her parents left, drove home and wallowed in their misery. But things were far from quiet in Riley's mind, which had erupted into pandemonium the moment the crash had occurred.
Since Riley had fallen unconscious not a single memory orb had been produced, and the hidden factories that produced them had remained abandoned and still. An anonymous, universal message had immediately been transmitted subconsciously to all entities found in the brain, telling them to cease their work at once. As a result, memories remained uncollected in Headquarters, the Train of Thought hadn't moved in days and the Memory Dump had been emptied as a result of "Amnesia Protocol Defcon One". But the most drastic change concerned the Islands of Personality, which had instantly been plunged into darkness, with or without core memories to fuel them. Unsurprisingly mass hysteria had followed, with mind workers far and wide wandering without jobs or purpose, and several large scale acts of protest had already taken place outside Dream Production Studios, the only department still active. To put it bluntly, nothing less than a full scale meltdown had occurred. And there was no end sight.
In Headquarters, Joy opened her eyes. The past several days had been long and restless for the emotion, but she had tried her best to stay optimistic. "Stay calm…" she had kept telling herself and the others. "We've had problems before, and we just need to sit tight and wait for things to improve". That optimism had quickly started to fade, and morale was at an all-time low between the five. Sadness had taken to napping for sixteen hours a day, whilst she filled the remaining time with a mixture of sobbing and moping around. Anger had also stayed quiet; a rare occurrence from someone as vocal as him. Now he was sat in an armchair, re-reading an outdated copy of his newspaper for the seventh time. Disgust had become a recluse, and had spent the last forty eight hours sulking in the shared bedroom because: "her services were obviously no-longer wanted…. OR needed". To make matters worse, Fear had finally snapped. He had always been teetering on the edge of insanity, paranoia and terror, but "the cataclysm" (his name for Riley's accident) was the last straw. The control panel was littered with dozens of his used coffee cups, and the excess caffeine had turned him into a jumping, jittery mess that had already damaged the useless panel several times. Joy was observing him now, wondering if there was any way she could intervene, any way she could cure the disease that had seemingly infected her friends.
Finally, she knew she had to take a stand, and that was what drove her to step forward and address the other emotions as a leader. Disgust's sarcastic, mocking voice immediately sounded from above.
"Great. Juuuuust great. You see that guys? Looks like Joy's gonna give us another one of her 'motivational speeches'. Give me a break…"
"Don't make me come up there Broccoli Breath!" Anger retorted in annoyance. "Her speeches aren't nearly as annoying as your constant whining! Don't know if you've noticed, but none of us have been very wanted OR needed lately".
"Shut up, SHUT UP" Fear whined suddenly. "All this bickering could give us headaches, or worse: M-M-MIGRAINES! It's best we sit here, safe and sound, until help arrives!" Unsurprisingly, this only infuriated Anger more.
"What help? Sorry to remind you buddy, but last time Riley got into trouble"
"We helped!" Joy yelped suddenly. For the first time in days, hope had suddenly appeared in her eyes. "We could save Riley ourselves, just like me and Sadness did when we moved to San-Francisco!" From above, Disgust looked down with uncertainty.
"Help how? Hate to break it to you, but there isn't a nymagical 'reset' button on the console". The others digested this. It was true, even if it was possible to help, they didn't know where to begin. Only Joy noticed Sadness slowly look up from her puddle of tears and begin to speak.
"A-actually, we may be able to help. Have you ever heard of The Core? I read about it in a mind manual once. It's the heart of Riley's brain, and if we can move the core memories there, we may have a chance to y'know… restart everything. Of course it's a long shot, and may not work. And there's countless dangers along the way, ones that would probably rip us limb from limb. Plus it's far away, like REALLY fa-"
"Okay Sadness. We understand" Joy said. "But this… 'Core' thingy… could it really help?"
"I guess so. But this is a journey we would all need to go on… This is just my opinion, but I think we could risk it. Riley… something's terribly wrong with her and I think we have a duty to help. Or nothing…. or maybe something". Joy looked around eagerly, clearly excited by the prospect of helping Riley.
"Anger?" Joy asked excitedly.
"Normally I'd think this was some kind of wild goose chase. But if it means helping Riley, I'm in. Besides, it must be better than reading the same old newspapers over and over".
"What the heck. There's nothing more un-cool than disagreeing with the crowd, so count me in too Joy" Disgust added unexpectedly.
"Great"! Joy clasped her hands together. "So… Anybody know the way to The Core?" Sadness sighed.
"I'll get the mind manual" she murmured as she trudged to the bookshelf in the back of Headquarters. The room stayed silent as she did this, but inside Joy was ecstatic. She had a chance to restore the friendship of the five. She had a chance to do her duty. And most of all, she had a chance to save Riley!
Reviews are appreciated. Tell me what you thought… was it too long, too short? Was the writing too dialogue heavy or too description heavy? Also, I underestimated the time it would take to update. An update a day is hard to keep up, so I'll try to make a chapter per two days.
