#writing except

Eddie Gallows stayed exactly where the doctor left them. They waited – indefinite waiting, tip-of-the-roller-coaster waiting.

It was harder, being alone and all. They understood why it had to be this way. Doc explained that there needed to be a large enough radius around Eddie to ensure that they had any real chance to project the way they wanted to. At first Eddie protested. This was an important mission and maybe Doc’s one chance to express what he’d learned from years of research. Wouldn’t it be better if he was the one to try and share it?

The doctor told him it wasn’t possible. Eddie was the one with the link – however weak – and that indefinite connection was crucial to his plan.

And besides, he assured Eddie. You’re clever as hell. You know what you’re doing. And I didn’t learn half of what I know now until you found me.

Eddie repeated that vote of confidence in their mind over and over, for a good stretch of their initial isolation, until the words threatened to stop making sense. At one point they laid down on the endless expanse of floor, as they used to so often before Doc taught them how to Recall.

From where they were they could see the faint outline of the human shapes hanging above them, some flickering, some drifting in place. The closest thing Eddie had to stars now.

When they first met Eddie asked the doctor if the sight of all those ghostly shapes still scared him. He said they never did. He said the sight made him homesick, which for a long time Eddie didn’t understand.

They got it now.

Eddie pulled themselves up into a sitting position and opened the flap of their school bag. The scent of the leather was vivid in a way that wouldn’t make sense if it wasn’t a product of their memory. There was a tinfoil-wrapped treat from the doctor inside, one of a few he sent them off with. Eddie figured by then they waited enough and deserved to enjoy one, so they pulled apart the shiny silver (It shined too sparkly and crinkled a little too precisely) and revealed what it was preserving.

A large slice of pepperoni pizza – still hot, fresh from a pizzeria in New York that the doctor explained closed years before he ever ended up here.

Even though they had no sense of hunger anymore, the smell of cheese and pork provoked a sort of emotional churning within themselves. They smiled and started to take a bite from the tip, fumbling the huge shape between both hands before remembering what they were taught.

Eddie folded the pizza to better grasp in one hand. They took a moment to enjoy the execution of this novel technique, and the quiet sense of pride that this was something they even knew what to do.

They took a bite and hummed happily. The biggest benefit of their new existence by far was the access to the doctor’s breadth of experiences. His memories were far better than Edgar’s. The food, especially, was infinitely tastier.

Midway into their slice of pizza (The slices were so large in New York. Eddie struggled to process people eating them in one sitting) they felt a pull their recognized so easily. Eddie quickly put the slice and wiped their hands against their pants, awaiting the indistinct manifestation of a different reality forming around them.

It was seeing without seeing. Eddie learned through practice how to recognize things that made sense out of the shape and color. It was hard. It never got less hard.

Eddie couldn’t help but smile when he felt Scott’s presence.

How is it, Goose? He was saying.

Scott mentioned Goose before. Eddie was glad to know she was still around, and happy to hear the affection in Scott’s voice when he spoke to her.

She was farther away. However she answered, Eddie couldn’t make out the words.

That’s good. Can I take my arm out now? The cuff feels a little – oh, okay. Great.

Eddie dug through their bag and pulled out a worn paperback. Another Recall from the doctor. The Ego and the Id was a bound version of the paper published by Sigmund Freud. When Doc first formed it from a handful of the material under their feet he remarked that he “never expected to need this for any real reason”.

He read it over the next hour. Occasionally Eddie noticed him roll his eyes or mutter under his breath. As someone recently and perpetually thirteen, Eddie admired the doctor’s refined ability to glower and angst.

The hundred page were heavily annotated, but Doc said the only ones Eddie needed to study were the lines highlighted in blue and the few lines written on the back cover. What he failed to notice before giving the book was the scraps and post its stuck within the rest of the pages.

Eddie studied. It was important for Eddie to study as much as they could, especially given they had no real way to determine the time in a reality where time still mattered. So they read the Doctor’s summarized thesis on the back cover, burning it into memory.

You have lost your nature, it said. You are losing your foundation. And then, with harsh lines underneath the larger letters, the doctor wrote ESCAPE SYMBIOSIS.

It was a deeply complex issue made as simple as it likely could. It must’ve taken years of study and interpersonal experience in order to make something so frightening sound relatively neutral. The notes in the pages before that reflected a different tone entirely.

Eddie heard Edgar’s voice, which always startled them at first. When his older counterpart spoke the voice was farther, yet it buzzed In Eddie’s throat as if they were the one speaking.

It’s the same as mine, it said. One nineteen over seventy.

Pretty healthy, Scott jested. Doesn’t make much sense for you.

Oh sure. Not compared to yourself, you picture of perfect health.

They were joking. It was wonderful to hear. It hurt Eddie more than the silence ever did or ever could. They focused on their studying, flipping through pages and catching snippets of the doctor’s thesis back when it was far less calmer.

In the first introduction of the three labels Eddie had heard so often, the doctor had made three small notes in the space between lines. Above “superego” was dead, above “ID” was dying, and around the word “ego” was as many question marks as could be legibly fit in.

At the bottom of one page Doc scrawled a hasty equation. “Over-I” is parent. “It” is child. “I” is birthright? And beside that, he wrote, feeling made flesh?

In the corner were some vague words, seemingly connected. Birthright, organs, cells. Academics, virus, parasite. Affiliate, and then, at the end of an arrow beside that word, vaccine?

A few pages later, in the margins. Aspiration pneumonia risk is seventy percent.

There was writing under that, crossed out almost to the point where Eddie couldn’t make out the words. It took some time but they figured it out. He’s not a fucking idiot, the doctor wrote.

That didn’t appear related to what Doc told them to remember. It wasn’t something Eddie could recognize from anything he told them before.

They flipped the page and were startled to see variations of the same single note written, over and over again, all over the twin flaps of faded yellow paper. It was scratched into the sides of paragraphs and cramped above every mention of the word “ego”.

ROT, it said. ROT, ROT, ROT.

Eddie had to close the book after that. The doctor was level-headed most of the time. And when he was struck with frenzy for a stretch of time, he would make a point to ensure Eddie was cared for before separating himself for the time being.

Was this what was he was thinking in the meantime?

Eddie couldn’t think like that. It wasn’t the time, it wasn’t the place – and even if that wasn’t true nothing about that was their place to make theories about. They had to study. They had to remember everything they could.

They allowed themselves another bite of pizza and went back to work.

-

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