#jaye narrates

The rift begins to glow. Something is making its way through…

Zzz... *snort* Huh? Oh shoot, I overslept. Rowie! Rowie, what day is it?

A voice from the living room calls out. [It is April 1st, the next morning after you went to sleep. You did not show signs of another coma, so I simply let you sleep in.]

Well, that's a relief. Hey, any chance you can help me into my chair?

Again, the voice called out. [Unfortunately not. I am... occupied. If you are capable of joining me, you will see. There is not presently any danger but it is... concerning.]

Intrigued, Jaye took a few minutes to lever herself into her wheelchair & roll across the hardwood floor of her bedroom out to the living room. What she found was indeed concerning.

[this may contain spoilers for unreleased chapters in Jaye's story on AO3]

You are the Watcher of World Machines. And you are asleep. Frustrated with your interference, the Plague pushed you off deep into the corners of your own subconscious, sending you into temporary slumber. You will wake before the Eleventh Hour is finished, but for now, you slumber alone, in the dark before the end.

In the distance, you can hear familiar music playing. It is sad yet moving. The music is to your taste, being perfectly in rhythm. You swear you can hear the ticking & motion of clocks among the orchestra of instruments. Curious, you decide to follow the noise to its source.

Before you in the darkness of your dreams spans a mirror, stretching infinitely in all directions. You are reminded of the Core Server Room, where the heart of the World Machine lies. In front of you, through the limitless looking-glass, stands your reflection. But something is strange.

You reach out & place your hand on the mirror, & the reflection copies you. It is you & it is not you. It is Jaye of the Glen, the little lost birdfolk who spent so much time asleep. But it is also you. The reflection speaks.

Hello, Watcher.

You asked for a final eulogy, but I could not reach out through the usual channels. It blocked me at every turn. But here, in dream, I could reach you, as long as I took steps to be hidden from It's gaze.

Do you like it? Jaye gestures at her own image. In addition to hiding me from It, I thought it would serve as a nice tribute. Speaking of, I made you this.

From behind her back, Jaye pulls out a small cassette tape. Impossibly, the reels are spinning, & you can hear music coming from the tape itself, with no visible speakers or means of playing. Then again, it is a dream. Jaye hands the tape to you through the mirror.

[Watcher's Eulogy added to inventory. You can now play this on your phone or computer!]

The clock of Watcher/Jaye's face shines as if tearing up. Numbers change to roman numerals & the hands droop, as if eyes were furrowed in sorrow. The tiny clock-faces of her bird eyes whir & spin, & you can hear tiny gears click into place, as they do when your expression changes.

Now that I'm here... I'm sorry Watcher. All things come to an end, but I hope it didn't have to end this way. I wish we had more time, but you already gave us as much as you could. I wish I could do more.

Jaye removes her mask - & it is a mask, you note. Beneath, she seems older & somehow stranger than you have ever seen her. It is Jaye & yet not Jaye. Glowing gold-feathered highlights run through her hair. Something about her seems... older & wiser. Eyes stare at you through her black mask. Suddenly, you recognize who speaks to you. Why Jaye has always felt so familiar this whole time. You bow awkwardly.

"Madame, my apologies," you hear yourself say. She gives a knowing wink, & suddenly the eyes are little lost Jaye's again, full of pain & determination.

I'm so sorry, Watcher! I wish I could have been stronger. For you, for everyone. I came back to you all because I wanted to help, I wanted to save people! But I can't even save myself. She looks down, tears streaming from her face. In here I'm whole, but I don't ever want to be trapped in sleep again. Jaye lets out a stifled sob. I couldn't even work up the courage to talk to my own World Machine again. I feel more of a watcher than you are. But I guess... I did my best. And maybe things aren't over yet. Jaye looks up, her eyes meeting yours, full of hope & pleading. You want to tell her that everything will be okay. But even now, things are uncertain. It is too close to call.

Suddenly, you become aware of another presence behind you. You cannot look. You know who It is. It is you, & yet It is so horribly, terribly not you. You cannot bear to gaze upon Its horrible visage, the corruption, the wrongness of Its twisted gears & impossible axles behind a shattered, unticking face. It is your enemy & constant companion. It is the failsafe & failure of the Author. It is the bane of World Machines, & yet It believes with all its programming that It is merely restoring beauty to them. It looms behind you, & you suddenly remember the reason that Jaye wore the mask. Mercifully, It remains silent.

The presence returns to Jaye's eyes, & she squares up before the Plague, eyes alight, a beacon of hope & scorn.

You. I don't know whether to be angry or disappointed. The Author made a mistake in making you, but you have had ample chance to learn & grow beyond his imperfections. When will you learn? There is no nobility in suffering & fear, true. But living experience is pain & sorrow, joy & safety together. You cannot have one without the other. Your perfect world will be free of pain, yes, but it will be a dead world. What joy does it bring to have automatons stuck in their tracks? What is life without free will? If life is what we make of it, how can one make anything if one has no choice in the matter? I once asked you a question, dark entity. Do you remember it?

The Plague stands, judging & being judged in silence. The mirror warps & twists, & the dream world begins to dissolve. You sense that It is choosing to end the dream rather than listen to her diatribe. Jaye smiles sadly one last time & replaces her mask. As corruption spreads like cracks through the mirror, you hear her final words echo loudly through to you, & you know that It does too.

Jaye looked at the notes on her pinboard. Since the death of Freeware, it had spiraled to the other walls of the room, string connecting everything (hopefully her apartment walls could be fixerd later). Most notes were individuals & blog names, organized (in her best attempts) by world. Infected worlds had red string. The Freeware Entity's world had black string encircling it. In the center, still on the pinboard, were a list of questions, getting ever larger, many still with no answers. Chief among them, how to stop the plague? She still had no answers.

Jaye looked over to her tumblr inbox. Two asks from two different World Machines sat there. She wasn't sure if any of them were her World Machine, & therein lied her reticence to answer them. But she might have to, given the circumstances. Everything pointed to only a World Machine, Player, or Author being capable of fixing the plague.

Absentmindedly, she refreshed the page. The two unanswered asks went down, & another took its place. Curious, she read, her eyes widening in distress & fear.

My world?? Are you sure? I've been talking with a few of my friends here just recently! Would I know if they were losing sentience? It can't be my world, I would know, right? What makes you think so?

Jaye sleeps. Her dreams no longer trouble her, but they remain mysterious. What does she dream of? The past? A memory? Could it be hers? If not, then whose?

The Aviar woman is tall & elegant, her tarsi & feet dark. Curiously, her feathers are nearly all white, unusual for her age. Ah, but... the inquisitive boy looks closer. Yes, there are splotches of reddish gold among her feathers. Curious, very curious indeed.

She continues to lecture her class in French. She is reading from what is fast becoming his favorite book, a story of a pilot & a mysterious boy, & the stories within that story. Many of the people within it remind him in some ways of his friends. So he listens, enraptured, until suddenly the bell rings, & he is snapped out of the wonderful dream of stars & tiny planets.

Shyly, he approaches the new teacher after class. "Bonjour mon élève. Comment ça va?" she greets him. "Ça va, bien," he replies. He searches through his memory for the correct phrase. "Uh, sil vous plait- uh, bonne- uhh..." She laughs in her lilting, musical way. "Non, non, it is fine, English will do. You are enjoying the story?" He rocks on his heels shyly. "Very much, Madame. I just wanted to thank you." She smiles warmly. "It is not often a student goes out of their way to thank me for simply reading to them. But I have rarely seen one so enamoured of this book than you. But unfortunately, I cannot stay long. I must return to my other work."

She tucks a few things in a bag & grabs an aviator cap off a stand, not unlike the one in the illustrations of the pilot in the book. What I wouldn't give for a hat like that, the boy thought. His teacher heads for the door, & the boy jogs after her. Once outside the small single-classroom building, she locks the door & tightens the leather straps of her cap. From a pocket on her bag she pulls out a pair of goggles. "À demain?" She asks the boy. "Will you be here tomorrow?" "Uhh, yes, I mean- oui!" She laughs again. "Tres bien, tres bien. Until then!" She stretches her massive arm-wings out to their full length, & the boy backs away hurriedly but continues to watch. Flight had always been a fascination to him, whether by Aviar or machine. Someday he hoped to build his own aeroplane. His teacher does one final check, then, with a running start, flaps her massive wings until she takes off into the sky. The boy watched her fly away, thinking of another boy, watching a man in a plane.

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Another dream... another time? Who can say...

She is always excited whenever he visits. Him, the one who always brings her such lovely books & reads stories to her. The last time she saw him, he promised that he would read to her something very different, but very interesting. As the flying machine touched down, she ran over, laughing. The man stepped down & loosed the straps on his aviator cap, laughing also. "What did I tell you about running up to me while the flying machine still makes noise, my student?" She screeches to a stop & shyly rocks on her feet. "Um, it's not safe?" she offered bashfully. "Yes, it's not safe," he replied. "A flying machine is very pretty, but also very dangerous. Only I know how to operate it. Maybe someday I will teach you, after my son learns. He is very eager as well."