Rising Shards

I returned to my room, and once I built up my will to potentially see Oka. I had prepped by staring down at the ground in case I couldn’t make eye contact with her. When I opened the door, Kalei was there chatting with Iris and Maia. They had a laptop up that had a live stream up that seemed to be on a commercial break.

“Kalei, come with me,” I said.

“Why? I’m busy.” Kalei said.

“Yeah, we’re watching Chunky Fungus.” Iris said.

“What is that?” I said.

“I don’t know," Kalei said. "But they’re gonna be showing a commercial for the preview of the trailer preview for the second trailer for Hado Diconius that’s coming out!”

“Didn’t you already see that trailer at the convention?” I asked.

“No, I saw the first teaser, this is a commercial for the preview of the trailer preview for the second trailer.” Kalei said.

“I’m…very confused…” I said.

“It’s gonna start soon,” Maia said.

“I’ll explain later, we just want to see this thing so leave us alone for like,” Kalei checked the clock on her phone. “Literally fifteen minutes. Then you can bug us again.”

“Fine,” I said. Kalei actually made me leave the room so she could watch her stupid trailer. I expected Oka to show up while I waited in the hallway and mentally prepared myself for what I’d do if that happened. My best plans there were to either cry or run away or to run away crying.

“Alright, it’s been fifteen minutes.” I said as I burst back into the room fifteen minutes later.

“You really timed that out.” Kalei said. “If you didn’t and came in while that teaser trailer teaser preview was playing, I might’ve locked you out of the room for the night. Well?”

“Well, what?” I asked.

“Aren’t you going to ask how that teaser trailer teaser preview for Hado Diconius was?”

I sighed. “How was the teas—”

“It was incredible!” Kalei shouted. Iris joined in and the two shouted at me for a few minutes about their weird naked guy comic movie.

“Yeah, it was pretty cool,” Maia said.

“I’m gonna make you read it, Zates,” Kalei said. “Then by the time you read it the movie will be out, and then you can see that!”

“Sure, fine, I’ll read it if you help me here,” I said.

“Can’t you just make Iris and Maia do it?” Kalei asked. “I have to post my reactions online and argue with anyone who disagrees with me that that was the greatest trailer teaser preview for a trailer ever in the history of all life.”

I didn’t really want to ask Iris and Maia but before I could even say anything Iris smacked at my hands like a feral child.

“Maia’s texting, don’t bug her!” Iris said.

“I didn’t even say anything!” I said.

“I’m just scrolling through reactions to the trailer on my phone, what are we talking about?” Maia asked.

“Zeta wants to take Kalei away for something, but Kalei told her to make us do it.” Iris said. “But I wasn’t listening for the other part, she was gonna tell us something? Or she already told us something?”

“I didn’t tell you what I was gonna tell you, I don’t want to bring you guys into it,” I said. “Only Kalei has to know my plan here.”

“Why can’t you tell Iris and Maia?” Kalei asked.

“Yeah Zeta, why can’t you tell Iris and Maia?” Iris asked.

“Because if I tell you my plan, you’re gonna say it’s stupid and that I shouldn’t do it.” I said.

“Well maybe you should tell them then because I have a feeling this is a stupid plan, and that you shouldn’t do it.” Kalei said.

“I’m not telling anyone else about this today,” I said, smearing my face in my hands. “Telling you and Amara was probably too much.”

“You’d tell Amara and not us?” Maia asked.

“Yeah, what the hell, Zeta?” Iris snapped and slapped at my hands again.

“Ugh,” I said, shooing Iris’ swats away. “Fine, I’ll tell you what happened, but I’m waiting to see your reaction before I decide if I’m going to tell you my plan. But you’re the last two people I’m telling this to!”

I hurriedly told them what happened with Oka and my wanderings afterward.

“…and then I told Amara and she ran off to her room and basically said she was going to flash Rain.” I finished.

“Why didn’t you start with that, we could be listening in on them screaming when that inevitably goes wrong!” Iris said, standing up. “Come on, Maia, it’ll be hilarious!”

“I really don’t wanna—” Maia started. Iris grabbed her arm and ran off, cackling madly as she left.

“I can’t believe they just took off like that,” Kalei said as our front door shut.

“Don’t underestimate Iris’ short attention span or her ability to make Maia do stuff.” I said. “Or her fascination with the love trio.”

“Well, fine,” Kalei said. “Now that they’re gone, I guess you can tell me what this great plan is?”

“I was in the dorm library, well I went back there because I went there earlier, and I had a great idea reading a book,” I said.

“I’m really hoping the book was about how to avoid overthinking a minor thing.” Kalei said.

“Well, first I was looking up if there are Cani with mind wiping or memory erasing powers, but I didn’t get any results.”

“So you’re taking this really well.” Kalei said.

“But then,” I said, ignoring her. “I found this book about cube-based art, and that got me thinking. Remember that cube we destroyed?”

“Unfortunately,” Kalei said. “But hey, it was actually Oka’s dad that really broke it.”

“That’s not important,” I said. “The important thing is that we learned we could go into an imagination node and bring stuff out of it.”

“I’m not following how that at all relates to your problem.” Kalei said.

“I just want to go find an imaginary me in the void and blame this whole thing on her.”

“I don’t think that even remotely makes sense.”

“We did it with the cube! Why can’t we do it here?” I said, drawing an imaginary cube with my hands to really get the point across.

“Because how many void made imaginary people do you see running around? Has a single teacher ever mentioned that it’s a thing?”

“Maybe it’s because they don’t want us to do it,” I said. “But listen, we’ve seen guilt chimeras before in the void right? I feel incredibly guilty about what happened, so I just have to go into the void and fight that and get a new me to conveniently blame my problems on!”

“OK first up, our guilt chimera was a monster made up of a bunch of stuff,” Kalei said. “Second, I’m pretty sure we just got lucky that there was the cube inside of it since it’s a bunch of people’s guilts mushed together. Third, it probably wouldn’t even be you in there if this actually somehow worked, it’d probably be a towel. Fourth, if it somehow was you, how do you plan on finding another version of you that would presumably be buck naked, bring her out of the void, past the void security people, and all the way back to the dorm? And even if you did, then what? The cube we got poofed away like twenty minutes after we got it, and we didn’t even end up needing that. What do you expect Oka to do if somehow a naked void clone of you randomly ends up in our room then poofs away?”

I squinted as I thought about it.

“Hm.”

“Hm? Is that all you have to say to that?” Kalei asked. “Did I actually break through to you how stupid this is?”

“Hmmm,” I said. I kicked at the ground. “Maybe. When you put it like that.”

“Zeta,” Kalei said. “Is there something more to this that you’re not telling me?”