Part Thirty-Six. The Little Girl
"You can't just intimidate her like that!"
"She wasn't listening!"
"She's a little girl, for God's sake! She doesn't understand! You know what'll happen if you keep scaring her like that? She's going to grow up afraid of you. Is that really what you want?"
"I don't do it that often –"
"You know very well that the worst things that happen are the ones that stick with you! Get a bloody handle on yourself! Stop getting angry with her! She's not you! She doesn't run ev'rything through logic before she decides whether it's true or not!"
"I know that –"
"All she wanted to hear was that her mum was gonna be with her when she died! Why in the hell could you just not say you would be? It could be a lie, fine. But – "
"There's no could. It would be a lie."
"It doesn't matter! You can discuss it with her when she's older! You don't lay the world on her all in one go!"
"So it's fine to lie all of a sudden, when you're always complaining that – "
"She's too young! You have to protect her until she's ready! Which she's not!"
I really wanna cry.
Momma and Daddy are havin' a fight, and it's 'cause of me. They only fight 'cause of me. Daddy must be pretty brave, 'cause if Momma was talkin' to me in that voice I'd be runnin' away. I know Daddy told me to go find Atlas an' P-body, but I don't like it when they say stuff about me when I ain't there. And I knew they were gonna fight.
"She's a kid! You let kids have dreams and you don't shatter them until they're, until they're adults! She doesn't need to worry about the, the logistics of, of what happens after you die! Let her believe in heaven, or, or angels, or the bloody Tooth Fairy, for God's sake!"
"You want me to raise my daughter to believe in lies?"
"No! I want us to give our daughter the childhood we never had! Y'know? A happy one, maybe?"
"I don't know about you, but the lies I was constantly told were a large part of my problem with the scientists."
"There's a diff'rence between letting her dream and actually, really lying. D'you seriously have, got nothing on child development in those precious databases of yours? Yes. You do. Remember? I've read it? Which you should also have done?"
I got no idea what they're talkin' about. I dunno what a scientist is, or angels, or a database, but I don't get why he's gettin' mad at her for answerin' my question. I dunno why havin' a soul isn't a fact either though, but I know Momma loves facts an' if somethin' isn't a fact she probably doesn't like it that much.
"That data is based on human research. She is something else entirely. Generalisation of one species to another is just bad Science."
"What the – science? She's not science! She's a kid!"
"Don't be ridiculous. Everything is Science. And I see no reason to apply human Science to - "
"Will you just drop the, quit it with the science for three seconds? Seriously! Stop! Just stop it!"
"Look. I did what you want me to do in the only way I can: I didn't lie, but I didn't tell the truth, either. I neither confirmed nor denied that souls or heaven exist. I –"
"Your truth is not the best truth! And don't tell me truth's, that it's subjective!"
"If there's no empirical evidence to support it, I'm not going to condone it. You know that. Why are you trying to –"
"Because Caroline needs –"
"You to stop yellin'!" I shout at him, 'cause I don't wanna hear them argue no more. An' I go to my Momma an' I cuddle with her. I dunno who's winnin' the argument, but Daddy's yellin' louder than Momma so I guess she's losin'.
Daddy makes a sigh noise and shakes his head. "Carrie. I told you to go find Atlas and P-body."
"I didn't wanna."
"How am I supposed to, how can I talk to your mum privately if you won't do as I asked of you?"
"I dunno," I tell him, 'cause I dunno what that has to do with anythin', an' I stick my face in Momma an' peek at him, 'cause he still sounds really mad an' I think he might start yellin' at me now.
"That's right. I can't. Will you go find them, please?"
"No!"
"Carrie –"
"Wheatley, we never come to a consensus in these arguments. So I propose we agree to disagree until such time that –"
"I am not the bad guy, here! " Daddy yells, an' then I can't peek anymore 'cause now I'm actually scared. "I'm trying to –"
"It doesn't matter what you're trying to do," Momma interrupts him. "The plain fact is that you started this argument by rebuking me for scaring her, and now that's exactly what you're doing."
"I am not! I…"
I look back an' forth a little, but I can't see 'cause it's kinda dark when you got your face stuck in your Momma.
"It's not fair," Daddy's sayin' real quiet. "It always happens like this. I always try to fix it and then she always runs to you."
Momma gives me a little push an' asks in a little voice, "Why did you come to me and not Wheatley?"
"He was yellin' louder," I whisper at her, 'cause I don't want him to hear an' get mad at me for not wantin' to cuddle with him. Momma does a nod.
"We need to pick this up later, Wheatley."
"It's not fair," he says again.
"We'll talk about it later."
Then it's all quiet for a while.
"Caroline," Momma says, an' she's usin' one of her soft voices that I like. "You know you can believe in whatever you want to believe in, right?"
"Uh huh," I say, 'cause I'm still believin' in souls even if she doesn't. "I just wish you'd believe in it with me, Momma!"
"I know. But until someone provides me with solid evidence, I'm afraid I'm out of luck."
"Daddy says he's gonna fix it so you can come to heaven with us."
"That would be nice."
"D'you wanna come?"
An' she's quiet for a long time, an' then she says, "I don't know."
That makes me a bit scared. She almost never says she doesn't know somethin'. "Why, Momma?"
"I'm not going to discuss that with you just yet. Ask me later."
"How much later?"
"Many years from now."
"Aww," I say, an' I frown 'cause that's a long time. "Can I be grown up now?"
"Absolutely not," Momma says, an' she doesn't sound like she likes that idea. I dunno why. It sounds like a good one to me!
"But I'm not finished, right? An' you make all the updates so I can be done, right?"
"That's correct."
"So why don't you just finish me so I can be done?"
"You'd be done, but you wouldn't be grown up. You'd still be you, just with all of your updates. And even if I wanted to do that, I don't have the time."
"That's 'cause you won't give me a job! If I had one, then you could have more time, right?"
Momma laughs an' she pushes me a little. "No, you can't have one. Ask me later."
"But later is in a million years!"
"Ask me in a million years, then. I'm sure I'll still be around."
"I just wanna help!" I say, an' I'm sad 'cause I don't wanna wait a million years.
"You do help me," Momma says. "You help me all the time."
"I do?" I jump off her an' I look at her, 'cause now I'm excited. I have an invisible job!
"Mmhm." She turns her head an' faces me.
"What do I do, Momma?" I jump up and down a little 'cause I got lots of energy, hearin' that.
"You give me something to do other than work."
I frown. "Don't you like workin'?"
"Sometimes doing what you like doing isn't always the same as doing what you should do."
"Like when I shoulda gone and did what Daddy said instead of comin' here?"
"Hm," Momma says, an' she moves herself a little bit. She's so big! I wonder if I can be big like her one time. Though if I was that big, I dunno how I'd be able to move myself. Momma's got a lot of parts on her that I don't got. "Well. That did work out for the best, but in general yes, you should do what Wheatley asks you to do."
"I will next time! Promise! But only if you don't argue anymore. So I'll do what he says, but if you're arguin' when I come here, then I won't."
"I'll tell him."
I go an' cuddle with her again, 'cause I really love when she lets me an' it ain't even bedtime. That reminds me of somethin'! "Momma, why do they call goin' to sleep 'bedtime'?"
"When humans go to sleep, they have to lie down in apparatus called 'beds'."
"Why don't they just sleep on the floor?"
"Because where humans live, insects or small animals walk on the floor, and the humans don't want to get walked on."
"Ooh," I say, an' I wiggle a little. "But we never get walked on, right?"
"I can assure you, there have been no vermin in my facility in a very long time." She moves herself a bit again. "I… thought of a story I can tell you, if you want to hear it."
"Really?" I shriek, an' I jump off her an' look at her an' blink really fast. "But you said you couldn't tell stories!"
"Well… I thought of one. I suppose I can tell one when I think hard enough. Would you like to hear it?"
"Of course!" An' then I jump back on her again an' I listen real hard.
"There once was a little girl who had been given a very large box. She gathered a collection of playthings, and she kept them safe from prying eyes, so that no one would know. She was a frightened little thing, you see, and she was afraid that if anyone ever found them, they would take them away from her. And then she would have nothing.
"She had lots of different playthings. She had dolls and blocks and balls, and she did with them as she pleased. They were only toys to her. Toys that did not care when she played with them too hard, or changed them to look however she liked, or destroyed them when she had a tantrum. They were only toys."
I don't actually know what toys are, but I don't wanna interrupt her in case she decides to stop tellin' the story, so I gotta try an' remember to ask after.
"She had many, many toys, but she liked her dolls the best. The dolls listened to her, and did whatever she told them to do, because they were her dolls and she owned them. She liked her dolls so much that she would play very roughly with them, and sometimes they would break. They would break, and sometimes she could not fix them. She didn't mind. They were only dolls, and besides, she had many, many dolls.
"One day, she took out one of her dolls and began to play a game with her. It was her favourite game. It was more fun than dressing them up, or playing toy soldier with them, or looking at how all their funny little parts worked when she poked at them with her tools. In this game, the dolls would go through a very special maze. She thought her mazes were beautiful. She loved showing the dolls her mazes, but she often grew sad when the dolls failed to solve them. None of the dolls ever solved her mazes."
I dunno what a maze is, either, but it sounds fun. I wonder if we got any lyin' around.
"But this doll did. This doll solved all of her beautiful mazes, but she did not like what she found at the centre. The doll escaped the maze, and went to find the little girl. And do you know why she went to find her?"
"Why?" I ask, before I remember that I'm not s'posed to be interruptin'.
"Because she thought she was naughty," Momma says. "She thought she deserved to be punished. And the doll punished her, punished her so badly that she would never be able to play with her toys ever again, and she ran away. She ran away, and she left the little girl broken and crying in the dirt. She abandoned her."
"Oh no!" I yell. "Her momma should come rescue her!" If I was broken and cryin' on the floor, Momma would just pick me up and fix me! An' give me a cuddle, an' then I wouldn't be cryin' anymore.
"She doesn't have a mother," Momma tells me. "Anyway.
"But the little girl was very, very selfish. She kept all of her toys in a secret place, deep below the earth, protected by safeguards that only she knew how to use, and it began to fall apart without her. She was so terribly possessive, you see, that if she could not have her toys, no one could have them. But one of her toys knew what he was, and he knew that she was gone. He was an old toy, given to her a long time ago, but she did not play with him anymore. She thought he was silly, and stupid. She thought she was too good to play with him."
"Was she?" I ask, not bein' able to help myself.
"No," Momma answers. "She just thought she was.
"But the ball found the little girl's doll, because she was so selfish that she did not allow her to run away. In one of her secret places, she had built a new toy that would bring any wayward dolls back to her, so that when she was ready, she could play with them again. And when the ball tried to help the doll run away, he made a mistake. He lifted the little girl up, and shook the dirt from her. But he did not wipe the tears from her face. So she punished him."
"Awww. She should've hugged him!"
"She… probably shouldn't have.
"The little girl was angry. She told the doll she had been selfish, refusing the little girl's prize, and she sent her into a new maze. The ball came for her, and together they punished the little girl once more. The ball was kinder than the doll had been. He did not throw her into the dirt, but made her into something that belonged in it. But she refused his kindness, and this angered him, and her cruel words forced him to accidentally punish his friend for what the little girl had done."
"I don't like this girl," I say. "She sounds mean."
"She does, doesn't she.
"The little girl got lost, and she could never find her way back home. But the doll too showed her kindness, and rescued her, and kept her safe. When the doll returned to the little girl's home, the ball had changed. You see, he had been a tiny little ball, and no one had ever played with him. And now that he knew how to play with the toys, he did as the little girl had done and played with them roughly."
"But that made the little girl bad," I say, confused. "Why'd he do what she did if it was bad?"
"They didn't know it was bad," Momma answers. "They were taught to play like that.
"The doll and the little girl had to punish him for what he was doing, so he would never do it again. He made them solve the little girl's mazes, though he did not make them beautiful. The little girl tried to help the doll, but she couldn't do very much. But the doll had shown her kindness, and she wanted to show her kindness in return."
"Oh," I say, blinkin' a little, "she just needed a hug, right?" Hugs an' cuddles fix everything.
"I… have no idea.
"So the little girl helped the doll to destroy her friend, the ball. Using her most powerful toy, the one that she had made before she was old enough to understand it, she got rid of the ball. She threw it away, because she was afraid of it. It was not a toy anymore. She didn't know what it was, but she thought it was dangerous. So she threw it away. And she sent the doll away, even though the little girl knew she was no longer a toy either and wanted her to stay. She wanted to play alongside her, and not with her, but… she punished herself. She punished herself so badly that she would never be happy with any of her toys ever again, because she sent her away. She sent her away, and she left herself broken and crying in the dirt. She sent her to the sky."
"Oh no," I say, an' I'm gettin' real sad, hearin' this. "Does this have a happy endin', Momma?"
"Yes.
"The little girl had made some new toys, and now she played with those, since all of her dolls were gone. But the new toys didn't make her happy. Playing with them was not the same as playing with the dolls. She had some new dolls for a while, but they didn't last. She was far too eager to play with them, and they were far more fragile than she had expected. Soon they were gone, and she was unhappy again."
"Where's her momma?" I ask. "Shouldn't her momma be helpin' her out?"
"I told you. She doesn't have a mother.
"The little girl realised that once, she had been happy to play with the ball, so she set out to find him. She brought him back to her home, and she dusted him off, and they played together for a long time. The little girl had once thought that only playing with the dolls and the boxes and the balls would make her happy, but she realised that she was a lot happier playing alongside them. Sometimes she was still selfish, and sometimes she still needed punished, but she tried her best, and the ball was happy to give her help when she needed it."
"He sounds nice," I say, tryin' to imagine these guys, but it's hard, 'cause Momma didn't say what they looked like. "Did he give her a hug?"
"Eventually, yes.
"The ball had given the little girl an idea one day, and in secret, she had made something new. No one had ever made anything like it before, and no one ever would again. It took her a long time, and sometimes she wondered why she was doing it. She didn't know if it would work, or if she would be able to handle it, or even if she should have made it in the first place. But she kept going. When it was finished, she showed it to the ball, and it made the ball very happy. But before she could show the ball how it worked, something terrible happened."
"What?" I whisper, openin' my eye really wide and listenin' as hard as I can. "Did it not work?"
"They didn't find out that day, because just when they were about to find out, the little girl realised her mother had been with her all along. But her mother had decided to leave. She told the little girl that she needed to be free to grow up on her own, and she disappeared. But this time she was not left broken and crying in the dirt, because she had her ball to help her up and wipe the tears from her face."
"You can stay with me forever, Momma," I tell her, an' I push on her a little. "Even if I'm a million years old, you won't go away, will you?"
"Don't worry about things like that.
"The little girl showed the ball how the new thing she had made worked, and it made them both very happy. It was far more valuable than all of the dolls and the blocks and the balls all put together, and though the little girl often wondered if she had been ready to build it, never once did she regret doing so.
"And that's all I can tell you."
"Huh? But… what happened to the girl and her ball?"
"I can't tell you. The story has no end. There's still more of it to be told, but it takes a long time to tell a story."
Maybe my Momma can't tell stories, after all. The first part was nice, but how can it be a story if it doesn't have an end?
"Oh, Gladys," Daddy says, makin' me jump, an' he comes over to Momma real fast an' then they rub each other for a little bit. I like watchin' them do it 'cause Daddy always looks so happy. I think Momma's happy too, but it's hard for me to tell 'cause she doesn't have an eye like us.
"You didn't have to hide over there," she says to him when they're done, an' she looks at him with her head tilted sideways a bit. He looks at the floor an' blinks.
"Well, I… I didn't want to bother you."
"You bother me twenty-four hours a day, so I can't see how that would be possible."
He laughs an' looks up at her. "I can't possibly um, can't possibly bug you while you're sleeping."
"You insist on using me as a leaning post every night, so yes, you can."
"Oh. So I'll just… go find someplace else, then. I'll go find that human –"
"Do that and I am never talking to you again. I'm being serious. Never. Ever. Ever."
"So… you don't mind snuggling with me all, ev'ry night!" He wiggles his handles and smiles at her.
Momma makes one of her computer noises and looks away from him.
"You're really quite adorable, you know that?"
"Oh, not this again."
"Carrie agrees with me. Right Carrie?" He winks at me an' comes an' rubs his face in me, an' I giggle 'cause it tickles when he does that.
"No! She ain't! But I am, right Daddy?"
"'course you are," he says, comin' off me so he can see me. "Hey. Y'know you can come see me when you're upset, right?"
"Uh huh," I nod real fast, "but you got a real loud arguin' voice."
"Ah," Daddy says, an' he nods too. "I got it. I need a quiet arguing voice. Will work on that… straightaway. Immediately. Tomorrow."
"Your grasp on immediacy is amazing," Momma says, an' her eye opens and closes a little. "I hate to think what would happen if you actually did something immediately."
"Probably something terrible," Daddy says, an' he gives her another smile.
"Don't look at me like that."
He keeps doin' it anyway, an' she goes backward an' says, "Wheatley!"
"Yeeees?"
I frown an' look back and forth, an' I say, "What's goin' on here?"
"I'm just bugging your mum," Daddy says, an' he pushes me over to her. "You stay here." He goes away an' I can't see him anymore 'cause Momma's so big, but I think he went over to her other side. She moves herself out a little an' then she goes and faces the floor, so I follow her. She only does that when it's time for sleepin'. And that's good, 'cause I'm sleepy from this long day an' I got lots to think about, so I wiggle into Momma an' close my eye. She pushes on me a little bit and I smile with my eye closed, 'cause I like when she cuddles me back.
Even though I got lots of thinkin' to do, I don't do any of it, an' all I do is listen to how big my Momma sounds. I do this a lot 'cause I wonder how it must feel to be so big like she is. But it feels really nice to sit with my eye closed an' get all warm inside out 'cause she's got more heat than I do. An' I listen to all the 'lectronic noises she's got, an' I think she's talkin' but I can't quite hear 'cause she's bein' quiet. An' also I can't hear her voice over the sound of her anyway. But I think I heard Daddy sayin' my name, so I yell, "Hey guys, you wanna talk louder?"
Daddy laughs and says, "Go to sleep, Carrie. Your mum and I still have to finish that chat."
"Then I'm not sleepin'!" I say, all horrified, an' I open my eye but it's a lot of work 'cause it feels like it weighs more all of a sudden. "You're gonna argue!"
"We won't," Momma says, an' her voice makes me feel all heavy an' sleepy. "Get some rest."
"No," I say, but my voice is really small an' my eye shut itself when I wasn't lookin'. "I wanna hear."
"Ssh," Momma says real soft, an' I guess it does feel really nice to just sit and be quiet, so I guess I'll do that. But I am not gonna sleep. No way.
Author's note
The story is adapted from one of my fics, Want You Gone. Carrie doesn't know what toys are because she doesn't have any. She plays with the testing apparatus and whatever random stuff she finds, but she doesn't have any toys per se.