Johnny: Break Character
Earth C has new animals.
A lot of them you think are old ones. You've seen them on TV when you were little, in old reruns of documentaries from your home planet that you never got to actually see. They are old in a historical sense, but new to you, as you had never seen them before the Game let you leave Alternia.
Some are new. You're pretty sure they are. You don't talk to Jade about it, of course, because many of her creations scare you, and that makes it a not very fun conversation for either of you. You don't like having no fun conversations.
You studied up on them in other ways. They've been around for a while, so there is scientific material on them, and you read that. It was the reasonable thing to do, almost two years ago, when you packed your bags and deserted your apartment and went back into the wilderness. You have to know what's out there, if you're going to be out there. Reading papers on poison and venom, to you, has nothing to do with smart or stupid. What you do you do for survival.
And sure, it scared you, back then.
You had had a good thing going, with your apartment in the city, not huge but big enough for you and your recording equipment and a nice TV. You liked the weather in New Florida, and how much everyone always talked about alligators. You were safe from them, up on the third floor. They couldn't get to you. All that got to you was the occasional mosquito.
And that was fine.
You liked being safe from the monsters, the animal and the plant variety alike. You liked that Earth C had no daytime zombies, no acid rain and no lethal sunlight. That was all you could have ever asked for, and it was good to be safe.
Only you weren't.
When the sun couldn't kill you, and the rain couldn't hurt you, and zombies belonged in fiction, and animals couldn't get to you, and plants were cute things in pots sold in stores, when every threat you had grown up to fear was eliminated, it was the humans who found you instead.
It was your fault for uploading your episodes from your home. That's what you told yourself. Signals can be tracked, and Grandma had been all about security, and you should have known better. Of course someone found you -- you just hadn't thought they'd want to. You are an advice podcaster. All you had wanted to do was make people feel good, not have them obsess over your voice so much that they would come stalk you.
But the damage was done, just by virtue of you being you, and they'd found you, and so you fled.
It was the easy place to run to, the wild. Familiar despite the new planet, the old concepts stayed the same. You still knew how to both cover and read tracks, how to build a tent, how to cook in the forest, how to hunt your own food. You don't forget that sort of thing. It's with you forever.
It was a scary choice as much as it was an easy one. The things you know you didnât learn for fun. None of this is, or was ever fun. You know how to do these things because otherwise you would have died when you were five. You know how to do these things because you had to, and life forced you to, and life was scary every day back then.
But when you went into the wild again, you just pretended to be someone who wasnât afraid. And that worked out for you fine.
You were someone who read papers and books and watched documentaries on wildlife with a smile and a nod, instead of breaking out into cold sweat. You were someone who slept in his tent during a storm, eyes shut and breath deep, because everything was fine, and nothing could hurt you out there. You grew even stronger and broader than you were before, you grew a beard, you let your hair run wild. You pretended to be someone who had mastered the wild, fearless and conquering, and as things tend to go with you, when you believed hard enough, it was true.
Unfortunately, this also means that as soon as you slip up, it stops being true, and you go right back to who you really are: a terrified child in an enormous rain forest.
When the snake bites you, you keep your composure. You donât move, you donât touch it. You let it do its business and back off again, and then you, too, back off. You stare at the snake as you do, to memorize it, to make sure that you know which species it was, so you can look it up and see if Grandma left you an antidote--no, hang on, there are doctors now. You will see a doctor about this. You still need to memorize the snake.
When you back away, you keep your composure. You make it to your tent, put on a shirt, grab your phone and your wallet. You need your wallet to go to a doctor, you think. Youâre not sure, but youâll figure it out. Your lower lip wobbles at the thought of having to talk to them, but youâll figure it out. You can pretend to be someone who talks to doctors. Itâs going to be fine.
When you walk back toward where you know the next road to be, you keep your composure. Itâs pretty far away, but if you believe you can make it, then maybe you will. Your legs, at this point, are cramping pretty bad, and the pain is pushing the tears back into your eyes, and you try to swallow them down, you try so, so hard, but for any great actor, there comes a time when they break character.
With a heavy thump, you sit down on the forest floor, your aching legs giving out underneath you, and you put your face in your hands, and you make the worldâs most comical grimace for nobody to see, and then you cry. You cry loud, and ugly, in heaving sobs, your shoulders quaking, your body rocking back and forth, snot and tears getting caught in your beard, until your head hurts almost as much as your extremities. Itâs stupid, and itâs useless, because the more you sit here crying the fewer time you have to not fucking die, and youâre an idiot child who is scared of nature even though she raised him, and you hate it. You hate it.
âUgh,â you say out loud, voice quivering, and sniffle. You wipe your face on your shirt. You pull out your phone. Itâs time to start being someone else again.
Itâs clear at this point that you need to call for help. You are a reasonable man now, who doesnât cry, and who knows when he needs a doctor. You are, however, still pretty far out, and you know the services here exist and do their very best, but would take a long time to get to you with their cars and their human legs.
Youâd be better off asking someone who owns a transportalizer.
The thought surprises you. Youâve gotten in trouble in the wild before, of course you have, and youâve never called any of your friends about it. You didnât want to, and you donât want to now. They worry about you, sure, but itâs uncomfortable, has always been. They worry because youâre stupid Jungle Johnny who wrestles with animals for no reason and does dangerous stuff because he thinks itâs fun. Youâve done this your whole life, but you donât know what youâre doing, of course, because everyone else always knows whatâs best for you, of course, and you donât. They would help you. You know that. But is that worth it?
Just once, you want someone to care for you without making you feel stupid.
You stare at your phone, flabbergasted in equal parts that you are thinking about this at all, and that youâd never thought about it before. The solution is right here.
You open Discord, and message Dion.
