Part 7: The Tower of Journeys Past
Leaning against the tower's interior wall, Finn psyched himself up with a deep breath, raised his torch, and pried open the first memory-door he came across.
"What the…"
Every door Finn entered contained a memory that, having been plucked from his brain seemingly at random, couldn't fail to rattle him.
"I ate a little computer?"
The scene played out over and over like a rewinding tape. Inside the room's psychic expanse, Jake sat on a branch of a cyberpalm of the Silicon Jungle, dared Finn to eat the skittering computer-bug, Finn burped, and his speech became autotuned. In mid-laughter, the Finn and Jake on the cyberpalm branch would then sort of glitch out as the scene returned to Jake sitting on the branch, with all the subsequent events happening in more or less the same fashion, but with some subtle changes. Finn remembered what PB told him once: Every time a person recalls a memory, they are in fact erasing the previous data and replacing it with an entirely new recollection that approximates the deleted memory closely, but not precisely. That meant that if he didn't want the memory he'd be retrieving to become substantially corrupted over its playthroughs, he'd need to restore it in his own mind as soon as possible.
The problem was that Finn didn't know if he'd remember what had happened in this mindspace once his real body woke up. And he definitely wanted to remember he was capable of singing in autotune!
Finn lifted his protective goggles and gulped. Strange as it sounded, it was the only surefire way. He'd have to scoop up all the scenes inside the rooms of the tower—back into his eyes.
Finn stepped inside and knelt his head down, wondering whether this was just stupid. Thankfully, these weren't his real, physical eyes… but still. It was weird.
He hoped the memories weren't independent now, that they wouldn't object to getting sucked back into Finn's brain, as he touched his eyes to the floor of the memory-room (occupied by the memory of the Silicon Jungle's fiber optic grass) and vacuumed up the mind-ink of the scene.
In actuality, it was no stranger a sensation than refamiliarizing oneself with some nostalgic token of one's past. In fact, the whole affair was surprisingly pleasant. Finn smiled, the last dreg of this particular memory firmly reconquered and sloshing in his psyche. Now, at the very least, come what may, he knew he could whistle like a robot!
Finn reclaimed a dozen more memories, door by door; it occurred to him that the cat was probably aiming for the happier memories to add to his collection. Finn feverishly unwrapping a birthday present from PB (which turned out to be a new sword with a compass as its pommel); Finn beating Jake at Card Wars; their encounter with the legendary hero of heroes Billy, and so on.
However, Finn knew it was only a matter of time before he happened in on a room containing a memory he might not want to take back. Something embarrassing, or maybe even horrifying—Quasipan did seem to loathe humanity, after all, so it would make sense if he made off with a memory or two that cast a human in a bad light. When it came to it, would Finn be man enough to do as he should and take even the memories he might like to forget?
And what if some of these memories were false leads? "Memories" fabricated by Quasipan to lead Finn astray? Finn quickly ruled out that possibility—Quasipan had harbored no intention of ever letting a foreign consciousness inside his own mind, that much was extremely clear.
His thoughts strayed on how Jake was faring when he opened the door to the 14th memory-room, and his jaw dropped.
This was not a happy memory.
"Oh… no." Finn knew exactly what he was looking at.
It was that day, that fateful night.
The Finn in the memory inside the room bragged "I bet I can kill that evil witch in under a minute!"
"A minute's pushing it, buddy, what with all those magicks," said Jake. "But if you insist, you really had better do her in quick, or else she really might hurt those poor lemurs."
The Finn outside the memory-room shook his head, and he felt sick at his own past self's rashness. Of course the witch would play dead after he said something so stupid. And he learned later, after the two had left the forest entirely, that the witch had waited for that moment to fly back up and capture the lemurs. It was one of Finn's most gut-wrenching regrets.
Finn slammed the door shut. I'll… come back later. Yeah.
Finn bit his lip and did his best to shove the incident from his mind with that lame pretext, but not even three more happy memory-rooms could stifle his guilt.
"I can tell you which rooms you'll want to open," a slithery voice sliced through the hush.
"Ahh!"
A snakey little worm bit into Finn's sock as he plodded up the next flight of stairs ascending the tower.
"Greetings. I'm a psychic worm. You probably don't remember my kind."
Finn balked. "This is probably some trap, isn't it? Some whack mind trap. You're a trap!"
"Enter through the next door over and see for yourself the truth of what I claim," said the tiny caterpillary slitherbug.
Finn mustered his courage and opened the next memory-room. The memory snapped back at the sight of the scene playing and replaying inside the room.
The giant king mind worm waggled its psychic rays and commanded Finn and Jake to hug him unto eternity.
"Ohhh. Right." The Finn outside closed the door and screamed a little inside.
"Heads up, you probably would have been better off simply trusting me."
"What… what do you want?" asked Finn.
"I thought you'd never ask." The snakeworm smoothly inched up Finn's leg. "It's elementary. I've grown bored of inhabiting this cat's mind, and I seek a new dwelling. However, I'm too weak to invade your mind without your volition. So the deal is this: I tell you which doors to avoid, and in exchange you let me inside your mind afterwards."
"And if I don't honor my word?"
"You have to; judging by these rooms, you're a hero."
"No. Your offer licks pits, I refuse it."
"Why?" the worm asked absently.
"A hero faces his mistakes and accepts them! I'll get back to the bad rooms… it'll just take me a little more time."
"You greatly underestimate the toll they'll take on you, child." And the worm left it at that.
Soon enough, Finn came across another bad room—the memory of when he nearly died from the poison a decoy "victim" Jake had warned him not to fall for. That was one agonizing weekend, with Jake taking care of his wounds while trying to mask his disappointment in him.
"Ehm… we'll absorb that one later, too." Finn blushed with embarrassment.
"Three doors, you've passed. Three contemptible, unworthy doors."
"I said I'll get them… later…"
Suddenly, the air in the tower had gotten… hazy? Thick?
"There is no 'later.' By spurning three bad memories, those ordeals have caught on that you won't be taking any of them. The tower, your tower is offended."
The resentful memories leaked out of the offending doors like a clinging gas, eager to scar.
"AAAAAAH!" The revulsion was literally palpable. Finn found himself quaking, and he wrung his hat's ear things, sweating profusely.
"Now's your chance! Make the deal with me! I promise I'll only ever be nibbling at your mental energy!"
"No!" Finn punched himself in the arm. Enchiridion, page 17: a hero never turns tail from danger.
"The shock of absorbing so much…. horror all at once, let's just say it won't be pretty," the wormy snake hissed gleefully. "If you don't want your mind pummeled into a miserable pancake, simply take me in your hand, and you'll be awake with just your happy memories, and fit as a fiddle. Where's the harm? Quasipan practically did you a favor!"
"Ahhh!" Finn barely dodged the point of a gnarled horn as another plume of bad-memory gas began to form into a scene where Finn got gored by an angry manticore's scorpion stinger. More of the scene came into view: Finn got gored, and failed to save an innocent butterfly from the evil beast's hunger!
The snakeworm's offer was tempting. It coiled on Finn's shoulder confidently, as the boy stared agape at the image of himself getting impaled over and over, mingling with all the other foul recollections pouring into being in the hallway Finn was now trapped in. His stomach churned; that scene over there, was that him knocking over a candy citizen's snowcone and forgetting to repay him afterwards? It didn't matter why he was rushing off, that was shameful! And that, was that him killing PB's prized flowers through negligence!?
"I… I…" Finn's head hung, he couldn't take it anymore. He was only 12, why should he have to relive such a horrid parade of failures? It wasn't fair anyway, that his life turned out like this!
NO!
His warrior's heart beat frantically. NO!
You overcame the last obstacles; you even persevered when you were led to believe you were a heartless monster!
Doubt clanged: But that was when I knew that memory was fake! All these memories are genuine!
Finn clutched his heart. He had to decide.
Search your true self, Finn.
…Search your true self? What did that mean?
"Hurry it up, guy," the snakeworm on his shoulder groused. "You're my ticket out of here."
Search my true self…
It clicked.
Finn picked the snakeworm.
"Excellent! Smart choice, now if you'll just say the words 'I waive all rights to evict this worm from my'—OOF!"
Finn jammed the worm in his pants pocket.
"Heyyy, what's the big idea?" came the worm's muffled cry.
"Shush! I'm still rescuing you, isn't that enough?"
"You mean…?"
Finn addressed the burgeoning cloud of nightmare memories. "Whatever bad things I may have done, it doesn't matter! They're still a part of me!"
And with just those words, Finn unlocked the key of the true hero in his heart.
Some part of Finn knew that adventuring was, in a way, running from oneself. The constant pursuit of new friends and new lands and new everything, wasn't it partly about forgetting? For all his bravado in battle, Finn was, in the end, a 12-year-old human boy. A 12-year-old boy who sometimes felt lonely and lost in a world he didn't really understand.
But now he held his head up high and proud. That false memory Quasipan had attempted to foist on him was silent because it lacked the ring of truth; it was a far-flung fantasy. Now, however, all his darkest days were clamoring and sounding off, real and raw as the moments they happened-and Finn closed his eyes serenely and threw his arms wide open to all of them in acceptance, without a trace of fear. Betraying reality, the consequences of his choices, would be betraying himself, the very core of himself. "This is me!" he shouted triumphantly.
The violent, awful memories froze, and began to gently lift at the edges like a piece of paper held against a breeze before funneling back into Finn's mind through his eyes, a sideways tornado. All the doors Finn hadn't reached cracked open as those memories barreled over into their master's embrace entirely of their own accord; it was as though Finn now exerted some magnetic force after his charismatic epiphany.
The tower faded away entirely, but Finn didn't fall to the floor. There was no floor. He was the anchor here.
"Preeetty impressive." Finn patted himself on the head.
"You won't remember it, though. Your little epiphany. When you wake up, it'll have vanished from your memory."
"My head will forget. My heart won't."
The worm wriggled free of his pocket and hissed, "I've never seen a heart capable of manipulating minds and stealing secrets, you moronic—"
"Shhhh. Bask in the glow."
Finn's hat fell away, bleeding into the white expanse.
"And your friend?"
"He'll be fine."
The mountain-sized shade-Jake stomped on the horizon. Finn kicked back to watch.