ECHOES COMPLETE

ECHOES I

'Echoes (FIG.I)'

Once upon a time, there was an individual who, for no specific reason found himself wandering through the hallways of an empty home.

"What is a home anyways? What meaning is there to be found?"

That's strange. You don't normally hear a voice issuing from nowhere, pondering the existential ramifications of your geographical location. So you keep wandering the halls, looking around. Paintings adorn the walls for what seem like miles, but, there's no way this corridor could stretch on that far, is there?

"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. "

She called out to me, that night. I remember her voice, penetrating and reverberating deep into my skull, into my soul. I wonder if she really existed, or if it was just an aura falling through my hair and into my ears, a hallucination, my insanity expressed.

You find yourself at the end of the corridor, facing a sheet of darkness that your vision and what meager light behind you cannot appropriately permeate. The voice beckons you

This story started when you were born, and perhaps even before. This story is not a story, but a reflection on the eternal gratitude she has come to seek. This is the reason he roams the halls, endlessly looking for reason in his heart of hearts. This is why I am slowly losing my mind to the echelons of existence and time, a myth extant only so long as it might commiserate with human awareness.

There is no appropriate precursor for what comes next, because every moment is just an ineffable deterministic puff of the unreal, calculating the effervescent moments behind it, that our perceptions might coalesce into the future. Am I real anymore? Who is to say? I sit here, writing on a piece of parchment paper, remembering the different aspects I've lost to time.

How you would sit there and laugh at me and tell me everything would be okay. How he would hoist me up I'm the fave of adversity and show me how to believe in myself. How she reminded me what it meant to feel emotions. All these individuals, and yet for the life of me, I can't recall them whatsoever.

At this moment, I can't recall a single thing, except for a few letters that are etched into the wall in front of my desk.

"DON'T FORGET"

ECHOES II

ECHOES (Prztok)

Prologue

Wait. There’s nothing here to make any sense of my surroundings. I feel like I’m positively surrounded by madness, or maybe that’s just the air coursing through my lungs. My mind is just a machine, an automaton, rambling through the chorus of existence. I don’t know how I came to be in this place, or even more so, what this place is.

Instinct tells us all that we must keep moving forward, however. But I can’t discern exactly what forward is; basic geospatial concepts like forwards, backwards, what have you, seem meaningless in this infinite void. I hear voices sometimes, calling out to me trying to lead me towards them, issuing from every side surrounding me.

“It’s okay. You can come this way. I’ll guide you, just trust me.”
“nodontlistentothemtheyareonlyheretohurtyou”
“I bet you couldn’t come this way even if you tried. You don’t have the gall for it.”
“maybe you could please come to me? i promise i won’t hurt you.”

How many more voices am I going to have to hear? I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know what to think. But it’s strange, all of these voices sound so familiar. I can’t place them no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try. They just seem like echoes in a void. I don’t know how much longer I can stand being in this void.

Awareness

I open my eyes and suddenly, nothing is made clearer for me. This isn’t my house that I’m in anymore. In fact, I have no idea where I am. I look around, and all I can see for miles is just grass, trees, and general assorted nature. The night sky is intense, I feel like I can see every single star that this hemisphere would allow me to say.

“Wait. What hemisphere is this? What world is this?”

Nothing about this world seems to make any sense to me. I mean, it feels like I’m in my own normal existence, lost to the annals of time on Earth, but something about this place seems so foreign, so alien, so insane.

So, I guess it’s time for me to figure out my plan. Looking around, I try and get my bearings. I was never good at navigating according to the environment around me; I was always told you could figure out which way was north by finding the brightest star in the sky and following it, but the problem with that right now is every star seems to be casting the same ferocious illumination forth. So at this point, it seems like it’s just a crap shoot.

I rotate to and fro slowly over the course of what seems like five or so minutes, trying to make a plan for which way I should plan to go. After contemplating my situation, I decide to just close my eyes again, and spin without any guiding force. After what seemed like an eternity of rotation, my body finally decided to settle upon a direction; I opened my eyes and started walking forward, with the hopes that it might lead me somewhere.

Anathema

After what seemed like hours, I finally came across what, according to my memory, would fit the definition of a sign of civilization: an abandoned dirt road. A welcome change after what seemed like miles and miles of trees and emptiness. I could almost swear that the darkness itself was watching me, peering into my soul. On more than one occasion, I was certain that there were eyes hiding behind the veil of darkness, just watching me as I walked along. It was strange, however; I don’t think I saw any sign of life, be it human, animal, or otherwise.

Well, good riddance to all that, I finally found a sign of something more than just desolate, empty arboreal madness. So, I look to the left, look to the right, trying to find any signs of life along this road. All I could really see, at least, as far as my senses would allow me to, was the road coalescing into an eternal darkness, a veil of unawareness, shadows keeping me from identifying anything short of the fact that that direction exists. So, I decide to turn to the right, and wander that way, in the hopes that it would lead me somewhere.

Roads are meant to connect two locations, right? So, no matter which way I go, I should come across some sort of life, some sort of civilization… right? About this time, I notice that there’s something rattling around in my pocket. Curious, I wonder why I never noticed that earlier.

I fumble through my pocket and pull out two items; one, a small, rectangular container of some sort, inscribed with these weird glyphs that I just couldn’t recognize for the life of me. The container itself was mostly white, with a small red chevron in the middle of one of the faces. The sides of it were inscribed with more of the strange glyphs. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but they look like they’re forming a sentence of some sort.

The top of the item seemed to retreat backwards if I fooled around with it, I noticed. I also noticed that there was some sort of strange, clear substance protecting the main body of the item. I looked to the item, then to my other hand, where I held the other item I recovered, and things started to make a bit more sense to me.

I opened up the rectangular item, and noticed that inside of it there were about 14 strange little cylindrical implements, looking like they were basically paper of two different colored sections. One end appeared to have some sort of cotton sticking out of it, while the other end had some brown substance just barely contained within it. It seemed that this brown substance filled up the majority of the white paper.

“I know that I know what this is, but for whatever reason, I just can’t make heads or tails of it… Why do I know what this is?”

I started to get extremely irritated. I could feel the identification of this device on the tip of my tongue, springing forth from my brain. I just sat there and stared at the device for a few minutes. I felt like I started to sweat; my head was aching. There’s some strange magic contained in this device, it seems. I felt perfectly fine, maybe a little irritable from being lost, but then I saw this and now for all that’s good in the universe, I feel like screaming.

I decide to use my mouth to hold the device while I return the rectangular item to my pocket. For some reason this just seems like the right place for me to hold this item in, anyways. Maybe I’ll keep it here while I walk and try and figure what I’m doing.

Promethean

As I continue walking forward, I examine the second device I found in my pocket. It seems to contain some sort of liquid that I can’t identify, inside of a plastic receptacle. The receptacle itself feeds up to a metal head with a hole inside of it, and some sort of strange gear attached to a button. I can’t really make heads or tails of it; I fidget with the gear a little bit, as I figure it must be part of the operation of this device.

It spins back and forth with great ease, an almost comforting practice for me. A mind-numbing ritual, to be certain. I depress the button down, but nothing seems to happen. I hear a noise, like wind blowing through my ears, which is strange considering the only draft of wind I can feel is barely present. I keep spinning the gear more, trying to figure out the point of this device.

Surely this device and the tubular item I pulled from the rectangular box must be connected in some way. I hold the device up to the end of the item sitting in my mouth, and depress the button. Predictably, nothing happened. I guess that’s not how it’s supposed to work.

I go back to examining the device, when suddenly I become aware of the fact that there’s a light on the road, growing larger as I walk forward. That’s strange, there hasn’t been a single source of light this whole time. I keep following the light, trying to see where it’s going to, but as I do it just keeps getting exponentially further from me, moving at speeds that just seem inhuman.

All of a sudden, with the intensity of a great storm, I begin to perceive what seems like a furious monster overtaking me, and then just like that, it’s gone. I saw its eyes, though. For just a moment. They were watching the spot of light that was being cast in front of me. Maybe it’s trying to follow the source of light, catch up to it. Maybe I’m not the only being lost in this world. As it passed by me, I could have sworn I heard it issue some sort of loud sound, like it was trying to communicate with me.

It was a high pitched noise, very intense. My ears rang after hearing it, with the combination of it growling and the loud noise that it registered. My irritation just grew further, and I started fidgeting with the device in my left hand even more. I noticed that if I spinned the gear fast enough, it would produce some sort of temporary light. It would fade out just as quickly as it came, however. I was fascinated with this, though; it was the first bit of control I felt I’ve had since I opened my eyes.

While fiddling with the gear, I noticed that if I let my finger slip onto the button after twisting the gear, I could sometimes get it to produce some sort of heated light, which I could maintain by keeping the button held. I decided to try and use this light to examine the item that I had sitting in my mouth.

After holding the light up to it, I noticed the end of the device started transforming. It was no longer pure white paper; it turned to shades of black and gray, and started emitting some strange, foul smelling substance. I can’t quite explain what it was, but I do know that there was something comforting about the smell.

I began to notice as I was walking that when I would breathe in with the item in my mouth, the substance itself would somehow travel through the item, and transfer into my lungs. It felt like it was wrong, like I shouldn’t be doing this, and yet at the same time, my irritation seemed to finally fade. It’s almost like I figured out what I was supposed to be doing, but nothing about it made sense.

I took a large breath in, and suddenly found myself violently coughing; the item flew to the ground, and for a brief second, I noticed that the end of it was glowing; some little bits of glowing matter issued from it as it crashed into the ground. I picked it up and realized that it was shorter than it had been when the device had made contact with it. I decided I should probably hold the item in my hand instead of my mouth to prevent that.

I placed the other device back into my pocket, and continued walking, looking at the illuminated item in my hand. I don’t know what it was about that noxious substance that it would emit, but for some reason, when I breathed it in, it was like everything was just wondeful for a few moments. I held the opposite end up to my mouth, and sucked in, pulling the substance into my mouth.

It had a very bitter taste to it, almost like it wasn’t meant for this sort of thing. I realized that if I drew it into my mouth first, and then attempted to inhale, the harshness turned from a consistent burning in my throat, to just a minor sharp pain that passed after a second or two. I was fascinated by this; I would exhale, and it was like I was breathing out clouds of this substance.

After experimenting with it for a while I noticed that the paper had been reduced down to the end containing the cotton. I kept trying the process I had discovered, but all it ended up doing was make my fingers feel hot. Getting frusturated again, I decided to throw the item away, as I still had plenty more to experiment with.

ECHOES III

Echoes (Diaspora)

Catechism

You were once a human being, weren’t you? You’ve come a far way since that day, however. I know what it’s like, though. Denying your nature, trying to find meaning in every little incessant detail that pops up in the mundane day to day routine that is life.

It’s like going to church. A ritualistic decision that serves no functional purpose, other than to pay your dues to the air that surrounds you. Maybe there is a God, maybe God is a myth; Maybe we all are God? I’m sorry, I ramble.

Do you remember what it was like, being taught that the world was the dark place you were always told it wasn’t? How people would rape, murder, deceive, and steal, just to get their way? See, for me, I never was explicitly told that. I more or less was made to find out of my own accord.

To that end, I have become somewhat of a moral relativist; to me, there is no such thing as good, nor is there such a thing as evil. All of these strange perceptions that we use to judge reality around us, are just a series of artifacts of the human mind.

Now, that isn’t to say that some acts aren’t bad. Sure, an act can be bad, but in the a priori state of not having been executed and not having any intent or will attached to it, an action is inherently neutral. It’s only the corresponding meaning that the actor applies to the action that really gives the action any moral standing.

That’s why you’ll hear stories of cops killing people and being lauded for their bravery, but then you’ll flip over a few channels and hear another story about how some homicidal maniac killed multiple people, and suddenly they’re the pariah that you were looking for.

“Who are you talking to?”

A man came up and sat next to me on the bench where I was currently located. At that moment, I realized I was just mumbling all of my internal monologue out loud.

“Oh… I must have been thinking out loud. I’m sorry, did I disturb you?”

“Disturb would be a good word for the things I heard coming from your mouth.”

I looked over to the man, to view the bewilderment in his eyes. It was almost as if his eyes were caught ablaze with the conflagration of confusion and disorientation. He scratched his head rather roughly while he just looked at me, trying to comprehend why it was that I said all these things.

“You know, nothing is even real anyways.”
“Wait, where did you go?”

I had looked away for a brief moment, to investigate the source of a strange sound I had heard, when, upon returning my gaze to the man, I came to find that he was no longer there. For one brief instant, I felt as though I were completely lost. Like I didn’t belong in this universe. Like everything was just a myth, anyways.

Somnambulist

It was a cold day in mid-December, when he found himself lying out in the grass, staring up at the stars. This seems like it should be snowing weather, he would muse to himself, while he let the radiation from light years away penetrate his eyes and dig themselves into his brain, that he may perceive the points of light.

“I wonder what happens when we die. No… I wonder what happens before we’re born.”’

He would find himself musing on thoughts like these often, pondering the ineffable nature of the world around him. He found comfort in knowing that there were plenty of unknowns in the world; having an unknown gave him a meaning to keep trying to know, more and more.

It was times like this, when he was pondering the nature of the universe, that he found himself more and more enraptured in the thoughts coursing through his mind. To him, it was almost as if his mind were veins, plotting the course of existence, and his thoughts were the lifeblood that kept him ever propelling forward through life. There was no sense of a “wrong” thought.

He would sometimes hear voices in his head, but it never concerned him too much. He would just assume that it was just a thought that had came into being in his head of its own volition, as he was always used to having these uninspired thoughts. Throughout the years, though, the voices started to become more dominant.

It was almost as though his thoughts were talking to him, trying to direct him in some strange sort of way. Upon thinking about it, he came to the realization that it seems like, instead of making a decision of his own volition to perform an action (“I think I’m going to go take a shower now”), his mind would speak to him and mandate the action that he should be performing (“You should go take a shower now”).

Predicate

Before he acted, he would always consult with the voice in his head. It used to be several different voices, but now it’s just one: a gravelly, unidentifiable bark lodged in the back of his head. Well, it seems like it’s the back of his head, to him, but, when you really get down to it, does it matter what the physical location of such a voice is?

Anyways, the voice in his head became like a companion to him. He came to adore it, so much so that he gave it an identifier. He would refer to that disembodied source of sound as “J”, for it just seemed proper to do so.

“He keeps looking at me… Doesn’t he? I can feel his vision burning into my flesh.”
“You should go and do what needs to be done.”
“But what should I do? I don’t know how to handle this.”
“Child, how long have we been going over this?”
“Well, you’ve been here for years, it would seem… I don’t know. I just want to know what to do.”
“Just go forth, child. Go forth, and act.”

With that bit of dialogue, his husk of a body suddenly went cold; his eyes, once a window into his soul, vibrant with energy and awareness, faded into a muted darkness, fixated on the man he believed was watching him.

And without thinking, without meaning, his body began to lurch forward, further and further, picking up speed with each passing moment, towards the Watcher.

Meanwhile, the Watcher, as he had come to identify the man in his mind, was sitting on a bench, reading a newspaper, sometimes looking up from his newspaper to check if the bus was coming yet. He had this ritual, daily. He didn’t believe too much in driving his own vehicle, because he felt it was just fiscally irresponsible, so he relied a lot on public transport.

After a moment, the Watcher noticed that something seemed strange. He saw someone gradually approaching him.

“Is he coming towards me? I can’t tell… “

A few steps more.

“Why is he coming to me? I don’t know this guy…”

Back to the subject, the voice in his head has become a roar. Furiously, it kept pushing him forward. Go on, you can do it, just show him why he shouldn’t be watching you! Don’t be a coward!

He broke into a run, dashing madly towards the Watcher. He kept sprinting and sprinting until he was right up in front of the man, and tore his newspaper away, throwing it into the wind.

“I know you’ve been watching me. I’ve seen you, every day, for weeks now, constantly peeking at me over the edge of your newspaper.”

The man shuddered, and looked at him, unable to speak due to the fear coursing through his body.

“I-.... I-i-i.....”

“There’s no time for your words now. You know what must come next.”

“What is that sup-“

And just like that, he slipped behind the man, and twisted his neck as precisely and quickly as he could. The man hunched over, his body now minus a soul, just an empty cocoon of blood and organs, waiting for someone to come and take him away.

“You’ve done good, child. You should leave, before anyone sees what you’ve done. We aren’t meant to take credit for our actions, no matter how much they may make the world a better place. You should go and reward yourself. Go see a movie.”

And with that, he ran off into the horizon, headed to the nearest cinemaplex that his memory could allow him to locate.

ECHOES IV

Echoes (Pendulum)

There was once a time that I could remember, when there were no problems. Life wasn’t an ordeal; I could go from day to day without having to deal with the the panick of a chorus of voices registering and firing off in my head. They would keep repeating themselves, over and over, commanding me to do this and that. There’s so many of them, I can’t even keep track of them anymore.

It’s strange though, they all seem to be subservient to one of the voices. Some alien, rough voice. I know it’s just an abstract concept in my head, and it doesn’t have a gender or anything like that, but I’ve come to be fond of referring to this voice as Him, He, and so forth.

He, as of yet, hasn’t commanded me to do anything bad. He just leads me through day to day life, and disciplines the other voices when they start acting up. I guess he’s sort of a supervisor of sorts? I don’t know; when you are having an experience like this, it really escapes the grasp of typical human language and concepts.

Anyways. I would listen to Him quite often. He would guide me through the days. It’s time to wake up; go get your clothes on. Go make breakfast, you don’t want to starve after all. Hey, you should probably use the restroom, lest you make a fool of yourself. All of those little bits and pieces, He felt like a guardian to me, ensuring that my needs would never go unheeded.

I remember one time, I went to the grocery store. I was wandering around the aisles, perusing all the different name brands and generic brands that they had on display. I ended up going down an aisle where another person was browsing, same as me. He spoke up to me, telling me of her desires and her motivation.

“She is watching you. She is fascinated with you, you should go and talk to her.”
“but i don’t feel comfortable doing that… i don’t want to talk to her.”

The voice got a little bit more aggressive and gruff.

“Go talk to her.”
“Okay, fine.”

I walked up to the woman, and tried my best to introduce myself, but right around that point in time, my social anxiety kicked in hardcore; nothing registered from my vocal cords, other than a hollow groan and a strange look on my face. She looked at me, shocked.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I, uh.. uh.. I just uh… I wanted to uh… Nothing, never mind.”

I turned the other way, and ran down the aisle, exiting it, trying to find the fastest route to the front of the store. I kept running, running, like I had to get away from some eldritch horror. As the exit of the store came into sight, I noticed that there were two individuals in yellow shirts, blocking the way for me to go out.

“Can you please move? I just want to get out of here.”
“You’re gonna have to come with us, sir.”
“I must protest, I’ve done nothing wrong. Please let me go.”

The two men each grabbed one of my arms, and began to drag me to a little office, set aside from the store. They threw me down on a chair, and left me sitting there. There was no one else in the office. It was just a plain room,with a few fake plants for decoration, and some generic artwork on the wall, by some nobody who was just trying to get a buck for his work. You know the type, I’m certain.

I looked around my environment, trying to come to terms with what was going on, but there was nothing to help me understand the situation. I stood up, and walked to the door. I tried to open it, but it was locked from the other side. Smart. Gotta give credit where credit is due. Since I couldn’t leave the room, I decided I’d just wander around and look at the fake plants.

“You know, I don’t understand why they just don’t get regular plants. It would add to the atmosphere of the situation, make it much more pleasant.”

I flinched, and jerked around, to see that someone had entered the room, and was watching my every movement. He appeared to be about six foot five, a veritable giant, with a shaved head, and a formal business suit on.

“Who are you?”

I stared at the man, grasping for words, grasping for clarity, but finding nothing more than air.

“You can call me Mr. 7. I don’t get called out very often, so you must be something special.”

“Am I in trouble? Did I do something that I’m not aware of?”

Mr. 7 chuckled in response to my timid questioning.

“You’ve done nothing wrong, short of existing, I suppose. You see, we monitor just about every storefront, every business here in America, we watch everywhere, trying to find specific individuals. Basically, if there’s a camera, we can see you. Now, let’s get to the details.”

I looked at Mr. 7 with a look of utter confusion on my face.

“What details?”

“It’s simple. We need your help. That voice in the back of your head? We need to speak with it. There are several other individuals that are experiencing the same thing that you are, but the majority of them went missing right before we could establish contact with them. You’re the first that we’ve been able to talk to.”

“How do you know about Him? I haven’t told a soul of His existence… Is this some sort of joke?”

“Let’s just put it this way. The entity that you refer to as Him, is not an entity that originates within your mind. That’s where our objective comes in. We are attempting to find exactly where that entity originates from.”

“Wait, wait,wait. So, you’re telling me, I’m not crazy?”

“Precisely the case, sir.”

The look of confusion on his face didn’t fade with this knowledge. He paced back and forth, trying to make sense of this situation that he somehow got himself into. For once, for some strange reason, the voices were completely silent. The only inhabitants inside of his head were his own thoughts. He kept trying to call out to the voice, but it wouldn’t respond to him, no matter what he did.

Mr. 7 looked at him.

“Okay. Fine. I’ll do whatever it is you want me to do. Just so long as I don’t get hurt in the process, I’m really not one for physical pain,”

“I’m glad you agreed, sir. The orientation process begins tomorrow.”