Testament Chapter 3: Everything is a lie, a big o fanfic

3- Everything is a lie

The world is burning and thousands are dying, nobody knows and nobody cares. I stand a silent witness, watching the final testament of humanity. A single fire filled moment and the almighty power of the Titans, mankind's last Memory.

I feel a twinge of pain, and look down to see the cause. A small part of my jacket has caught fire. How foolish it had been to feel as if I was only an outside observer, that I was somehow exempt from the nightmarish vision before me. I shed the jacket and toss it aside, and it is consumed quickly in the inferno. It is too late, the flame has caught elsewhere, and I am engulfed in the torrent. I can feel the flames licking my flesh, my lungs filled with smoke. I fall to the ground, realizing that my own Memory is fading away, that I will be forgotten.

The ground beneath me crumbles. The monster from beyond the darkness was waiting, and it takes me in its hand, plotting to devour me.

Awareness came gradually, filled with fleeting moments of clarity and confusion. So many things flickered past: waiting, time, memories, titans, angels, fear, and hatred. Then my eyes opened. It was dark. My jacket was missing, and for a few moments reality and fantasy mixed.

Was I still in the subway, or had the deity dragged me elsewhere? I looked around; eyes still covered lightly with the film of sleep, and then slowly sat up. The red cloak was draped across my legs, the broken mask set carefully in the middle of the cloth. I was outside, lying besides the manhole. The lid had been replaced. Everything looked as it had first when I first laid eyes on it; evening shadows the only thing showing the passage of time.

I stood up, scooping up the cloak and mask as I did. I checked my wallet and found it untouched. After a minuet or two trying to gather my wits, I limped to my car, every muscle aching. The vehicle was also untouched, and I locked the doors after climbing in. Then, slowly, I started the car and drove off, wondering what I was going to tell my wife.

By the time I returned home, I'd put together a sorry half-attempt at an excuse to explain my absence. It turned out to be a wasted effort, because Dee's only question regarded the items I brought with me.

She eyed the cloak speculatively. It was not something I would-- or could, for that matter-- wear, but I'd always had gifts carefully wrapped and packaged before presenting them. "Is this for me?" she wondered.

"Hmmn?" I was heading for the desk, where my typewriter waited for me, as well as the dregs remaining in a drained cup of coffee. I paused and glanced at her.

"The cloak. Did you get it for me?"

"Yes," I lied. My wife studied my face for a second, and then seemed satisfied. I walked over and draped it over her shoulders, and by some remarkable chance it fit. We were both a little surprised by this, my gifts where normally a size or two off. She adjusted it and offered small, barely noticeable, yet decidedly smug smirk.

"It's red," she noted, the casual tone not quite covering the hint of conceit. "I believe there was a certain rule about that kind of thing, darling."

"Red was always the exception," I replied quickly, brushing her sarcasm aside. I wasn't in the mood for the petty banter that used to be our staple of conversation. Thankfully she dropped the subject, and turned her attention to the mask I still held onto.

"What's that?"

I shrugged. "It's a Memory."

"Pardon?"

"It's a mask. At least, part of one."

She plucked the mask from my hand. Holding it up for a better look, she turned it over in her petite hands, a dim light of recognition playing across her face. "A half-mask, from the theater," she observed. I refrained from mentioning that I'd stepped on it. "This is from a show they played long ago."

"Really?" I asked, curiosity piqued. "What was it...?"

"It was worn by a ghost," she said slowly, recalling bits of memory that drifted in her mind. "A ghost that haunted a theater. At first he was driven by compassion to guide and mentor the heroine, but was eventually overcome by obsession. It drove him to madness." Here she paused, thinking as she ran her fingers along the broken edge of the mask. "Instead of guiding, he became the adversary, seeking to destroy that which he'd helped create. He wore a mask to hide the defects in his face."

"Ah," I said. It sounded far too contrived for my interest. Then again, I was never much one for theatrics.

She set the mask on the nearby side table. "Now that I think about it, this isn't the same mask. That one was white."

I returned to the apartment the next day, and the day after that. I took the typewriter with me. It helped break the monotony. The apartment did not improve from my patronage, and my own trash began to accumulate: cigarette butts, coffee cups, discarded scraps of paper, all piling up in their own respective areas.

My wife didn't ask about the typewriter. She didn't ask about much of anything any more. She'd always been quiet, but what little conversation existed in my house had died. All that was remained was the tune of the piano and the clicks and whirs of the typewriter.

The nightmares came and went, and I eventually found it easier to catnap throughout the day than bother with disturbed sleepless nights. Sometimes, while walking to the apartment, I'd pass the manhole and wonder. Then I would remember the titan, the red-cloaked woman, and hurry on inside.

It's not a bad life, waiting. We all march to our inevitable demise.

The bar was crowded, which was unusual this early in the day. At least, that had always been the case when I was a regular. I squeezed my way through an obstacle course of tables, chairs, and bodies. I headed for the back, looking for a certain person of wisdom who'd inhabited the establishment years before.

Honestly, I had no idea why I was searching for him... or even if he was still alive. He was old when I knew him, and it had been so many years since we last met. Still, it was something to do.

Most people offered only a passing glance before going back to their business, but the bartender and a few patrons stared unabashedly. It was to be expected, considering how unkempt I looked. My hair hadn't seen a comb in a while, and shaving was no longer worth the effort. After my jacket went missing, I stopped wearing suit jackets altogether.

To my surprise he was still there. Like the angel, he was perfectly unmoved by time. Sitting in the same old seat, drinking the same old whiskey and reading the same old newspaper.

The chair opposite of the table was inexplicably unoccupied, so I took a seat and lit up a cigarette. "Does anyone but me grow older in this city?" I asked, at length.

The informant smiled, never looking up from his paper. "Some of us age in different ways. You can't just judge by appearances, Mr. Reporter."

I didn't respond.

He flipped a page of his paper and continued. "Did you have any other questions for me, or is this just a social call? It's been awhile."

I hadn't expected him to be here, much less thought out an entire line of enquiry. A small part of me hoped for an easy way out, that he would just offer up the answers to the questions of the city, of the nightmares, of fear. The questions I needed to ask refused to formulate in my mind, they could not be put into words. There was only one thing I could ask: the same question I'd posed to the angel.

"What is this city waiting for?"

"If you want to live a happy life, you don't ask questions like that. Haven't I told you that before?"

"I've followed that false promise of the future all of my life. It's propaganda, nothing more. Nonsense produced by Paradigm Corporation to feed to the lapdogs and fools of this city, to make them feel better about the lost Memories. Time keeps flowing, and the future does not seem as bright as promised. There is no future without the past."

"Indeed? Are you thinking of following in the footsteps of that other reporter? He went insane, in case you forgot."

I shook my head. "Who judges sanity? It doesn't matter. It isn't the question at hand. You're the informant; tell me what this city is waiting for.

"This city is nothing more than a stage, and we are actors who play out our given roles. We wait for our required actions and then pass on. Nothing more, nothing less."

I smashed the cigarette I'd been smoking into the ashtray on the table, a growing feeling of outrage simmering inside. What nonsense! "If we are actors, why are there Memories? What's the point of emotion, of the vast interplays of our internal existence?"

He folded the paper and placed it in the never-growing pile besides him, then pulled out another from the bottom. "Can you prove me wrong?" he asked in a neutral tone.

I opened my mouth, and then closed it. No, there was no way to prove him wrong, and I couldn't help but feel even more enraged at the prospect that he'd pointed it out. No arguments could be made because no research had been done, beyond what was locked behind seals of classification in the Paradigm Corporations vaults.

"Why do you want to know, anyways?" the informant prodded.

"I went down into the subway recently," I replied. "When I came back, I wasn't quite the same person who'd gone down. It's not the first time I've been down there."

"Why do you go down?"

There was the question, the one that had no answer. Was it to face my fear? If so, I never succeeded. Was it to find the truth? I had found no truth underground. Was it merely some primordial compulsion, some hard coded part of my genes or psyche? Then there was no such thing as freedom of choice. "I don't know."

"Before you start trying to figure out this city, you might want to try figuring out yourself. Actors don't need to understand the script, just deliver it properly. They can't do that if they don't understand their character. For instance, why did you start smoking?"

"I don't know."

"You understand, don't you?" He flipped through the pages of the paper. "Is there anything else you wanted, Mr. Reporter?"

I got up, not looking at the informant as I dropped a wad of cash-- always cash-- onto the table. I started walking away, feeling angry, weak, and violated.

"One more thing, Mr. Reporter. Don't bother trying to look for the truth of this city," he called out after me. "You won't find it. And even if you do, truth is always less satisfying than the lies we tell ourselves."

I pushed through the crowd, aggressively this time, making my way towards the exit. The door swung open just as I got there, and a brash looking youngster stepped in. He strutted around in a flashy black suit, as if he owned the city. He was a mirror reflecting my past. I continued forward, refusing to adjust my course as the youngster walked towards me, barely aware of my presence.

He ran into my shoulder as we passed, and for a moment seemed to wake from his illusionary world of rules and ego. He glanced at me and a brief look of contempt flashed over his face. "Oblivious dome dweller," he muttered.

"Imbecilic lapdog," I countered and walked out the door, allowing the child to return to his fantasy world. He'd have a rude awakening some day, and as I left the bar my only wish was that I could be around to see the look on his face when he did.

A Memory had found itself a home in my apartment as well. The broken mask usually shared the rickety table with my typewriter, but when I entered late one evening, it was being held in the hands of an Angel. She ran her fingers over it, mindlessly toying with the thing as she sat perched on the edge of the cot.

I paid little attention to her as I walked into the room. Arriving at the desk, I turned the chair around to face her and took a seat, waiting patiently for her to explain her presence.

She smiled, but didn't speak.

"I'm sorry, I forgot that you can't initiate conversations anymore." It came out more of a sneer that I'd intended. "What are you doing here?"

"Quite a place you've got here," she avoided the question, her reply equally harsh. She reached across the empty space and set the mask down on the table, then settled back.

"It's late, I'm tired. I only came here to pick up the typewriter. What do you want?"

"I was curious to find out how your attempt to defeat fear had turned out."

"It turned out..." my words drifted, failing to come to any conclusive end.

"I'm sorry, I forgot. You can't finish sentences anymore."

How dare she throw my own words back at me? "Sarcasm is the refuge of the ignorant," I spat back through clenched teeth.

"That doesn't stop you."

"I never claimed to be an all-knowing Angel."

She folded her arms and gave me a disapproving look. "I never said that I was all knowing. Anyway, I came here because I needed to return something." With that, she turned slightly, reaching behind her to a bundle that lay on the cot. It was a big black piece of clothing, and for a moment I failed to recognize it.

"My jacket," I said. It was the same one I'd lost in the subway. "You were down there? You were…"

The red cloak, the feminine figure.

"Do you want your jacket, or not?" She offered it with outstretched hands.

"No, no! Look, if you were down there, then... you can answer so many questions! You know!" I was almost pleading, but pride was beyond me now. "Tell me what happened. I can't go down there, but you can. Don't you see what this means?"

"Are you sure you don't want the jacket back? It's your last chance."

"No. Please, you can help me."

She sighed, and placed the jacket on the bed. "I won't be your crutch Mr. Reporter. I can't face the fear for you. It's not my role."

"But... you can find... the truth. The city...! The memories!"

"Some of us aren't interested anymore."

I sat in silence, too stunned to react. What could I say? What could I do to convince her to search for me? The silence stretched on, awkward and heavy.

"I have a present for you, Mr. Reporter," she said finally, and produced yet another piece of clothing from behind her. Where my jacket had been carelessly wadded into a pile, wrinkled and forgotten, this was neatly folded with a pastel pink ribbon pinned to it.

"What's the occasion?" I asked suspiciously, taking the article as she pushed it into my hands. It was brown. Unfolding it revealed a vest, nicely made, the fragment of an incomplete three-piece suit.

"If I remember, your anniversary was a few days ago. Please send my condolences to your wife."

"Condolences?"

"Pardon, I meant congratulations." She paused for a moment, watching me fiddle with the vest the same way she'd toyed with the mask earlier. "Try it on. I think it'll look good on you."

I nearly replied that anything would look good on me, but staring at the vest, I felt uncertain. It was brown.

The cloak had been red. I was a man of rules, but I'd told Dee that red was an exception. Only now I realized, making one exception to a rule was to invalidate it. I pulled off the ribbon and put the vest on. It fit nicely, and it made me feel a little more composed.

Angel stood and gave me a quick nod of approval, then headed for the door. "Take care," she said, as she slipped out of the apartment.

Through some miracle, I managed to stumble into the house. It was late, later than I'd ever returned after staying at the apartment. The world seemed to sway up and down with each step. It was the disorientation of sleep deprivation mixed with inebriation from the consumption of far too much cheap wine. Cause and effect. I never drank this much when I was younger, how did Angel always manage to do this to me?

I staggered into the foyer, the typewriter a dead weight in my hands. When I tried to drop it onto the nearest table, my fingers refused to function, clinging to the typewriter as if it were a lifeline to reality. After a few attempts it fell with a heavy thump, gouging the tables surface. I'd catch hell for that later.

Alone in the middle of the living room, I leaned against the couch and waited for the world to stop its erratic sway. I'd expected my wife to be waiting, stern and immobile as she ever was, but she was nowhere in sight. Deciding not to worry about it, I tried to settle down onto the couch, but my knees would not cooperate.

So I stood hunched over and clinging to the arm of the couch, and watched the rain splatter against the balcony windows. It was only a drizzle at the moment, but was slowly building momentum.

There was a flicker of red in the bleak and dreary world outside.

In an instant I knew it was my wife, bundled in that red cloak, standing on the edge of the balcony. I slowly straightened up and walked to the door. Sure enough, she was there. I fumbled with the latch and pushed open the door. Once outside I walked carefully and deliberately, trying desperately not to slip. It took a few moments to make my way over to her, standing there indifferent to the wind and rain.

"Are you cold?" I asked, my voice slurred.

"Are you drunk?" she returned my question with her own.

"No. Yes. What difference would it make?"

"None, really."

The conversation lapsed into silence; the rain grew heavier, and beat down on my shoulders.

"I ran into her today," she said at length.

"Who?"

"Who else? I know you've seen her too. She hasn't changed... I don't understand it. Is she an android?" There was a pause, and she answered herself. "No, I would have known. Something else entirely?"

"I don't know. Maybe she really is an angel." I laughed, but Dee was unmoved.

Her soft voice grew quiet, barely discernable over the rain. "She said you're going away."

"Maybe I am, she seems to know." We fell silent. For a moment we were standing in the past, quietly enjoying each other's company as we had for so many years. "Look, it's dawn."

And it was. The artificial sun had started up, its dim light filling the dome. The valves that controlled the rain were closing off, and the rain began to fade. My wife stirred on the parapet.

"Please don't."

"Don't go away? Maybe I have to. I need to find out, Dee. If there are no memories and we're just actors, then how can anything matter? There's got to be an answer, a truth behind it all. I think I can find it."

She turned around to look at me. "Can't you see what's happening?"

"All I see is the course I should've taken since the beginning, the things I desired but hesitated to act on-- because I was afraid."

Another silence followed, this time strangely bittersweet. Dee turned back to look at the clockwork sun. "Goodbye then."

She took a step forward, off the balcony.

"Dee!" I cried. But it was too late.

She was already gone.