[23:47] <J0hnDo3> ”We're all nothing but the sum of our own lies.” [23:47] <J0hnDo3> That was the last thing she said to me before she died. [23:47] <J0hnDo3> I don't know what she meant, but none of that matters anymore. [23:47] <J0hnDo3> Nothing does.

Her electric eyes in the dark. Four feet dangling from the familiar bridge.

Two bottles glittering in the synthetic lights of the city below.

”I can’t do this anymore.”

[23:48] <J0hnDo3> This room is dark and silent. The darkness is not something new, but the silence is. [23:48] <J0hnDo3> She was the talker, the player of music and games. [23:48] <J0hnDo3> Now there's just me, and I was always the quiet one. The thinker, the brooder. [23:48] <J0hnDo3> And nothing of that has changed, although everything else has. [23:48] <J0hnDo3> I'm not sure if I'm drinking to honor her memory or to forget.

”Give me your hand.”

A knife suddenly, without a smile, without a joke.

Something real, something since long weighing heavy

on solitary shoulders.

My confused hand in hers.

”Remember how we mixed blood as children?”

[23:49] <J0hnDo3> My computer is my only window to the outside world now, the only thing that grants importance to my days. [23:49] <J0hnDo3> She was always the outgoing one, the force that sometimes made me leave the virtual world for the physical. [23:49] <J0hnDo3> That force is gone now, and I have none of my own. Even less so now than before, actually.

Pain. The neon reflections in the blade, in the crimson liquid emerging from the paleness of my hand.

”See, your blood’s still red.”

Another scar, another wound. Glittering darkness like velvet quicksilver.

Little stars twinkling from the midnight oil in her cupped hand.

”Mine is not anymore.”

[23:51] <J0hnDo3> She always told me that we were going to change the world, one circuit at a time. We were going to salvage what was worth saving and tear down that which was not. [23:51] <J0hnDo3> Then we were going to stand by the crater and watch it all burn. [23:51] <J0hnDo3> She was on a crusade to steal it all back from the world's rightless powers and to uncover all their lies. [23:51] <J0hnDo3> I always followed, because as far as crusades go, she was mine.

”I found something, Jonathan, and I went too deep. Now it is changing me.”

Eyes usually brave, defiant, now filled with fear – and something else not readily apparent without looking dangerously closely;

twinkling, twinkling little stars draped in mercury midnight oil.

[23:53] <J0hnDo3> I don't know where she got the gun, or why I still have it. It is a sick thing to have, right, and an even sicker thing to keep. [23:53] <J0hnDo3> I made a half-hearted attempt to clean it, but it still has specks of her burnt, dark blood all around the muzzle. It just won't come off. [23:53] <J0hnDo3> Well, it doesn't matter to me. It will do it's job again just as well anyway.

”I can’t explain it. I’ve tried to understand what is happening, but I can’t.

I think I’m going mad.”

Three deep breaths, barely held back tears and panic.

”I can’t feel things like I used to, and I know things I shouldn’t know.

Like it’s someone else’s knowledge that I don’t know how I have.

And I have stopped sleeping, Jonathan.

I just lie there in the darkness, like in standby mode.

And the itching… I think there is something under my skin.

Something… not organic.”

[23:54] <J0hnDo3> When she met me on the bridge that night it was the first I saw of her in several days. [23:54] <J0hnDo3> I want to remember her as she was, not for the fear and panic and absence of her last three weeks. [23:54] <J0hnDo3> After she found that shit on the Tor dark web, that is. [23:54] <J0hnDo3> She never told me what it was, if it was tools or drugs or information. Perhaps all three of them. [23:54] <J0hnDo3> But whatever it was, it drove her mad and killed her. [23:54] <J0hnDo3> And one could say that indirectly it's now killing me too.

The knife is gone, and now there’s a gun.

Chrome surface reflecting the cityscape just as well as

eyes and bottles and blood ever did.

Panic in my mind suddenly.

”What are you doing with that? Put it away!”

I grab her hand tightly, feel pulsing red and black blood

intermingling between our palms.

[23:56] <J0hnDo3> I cannot stand this silence and darkness anymore. I cannot stand being on a crusade that means nothing to me now that she is gone. [23:56] <J0hnDo3> The world is so empty and pointless without her, not even worth burning or tearing down. [23:57] <J0hnDo3> I've realized that even if I didn't understand it at the time, this is why I kept the gun. Why I picked it up and hid it when the sirens approached. Why I lied about it when the police came by. [23:57] <J0hnDo3> Why I'm typing this with its chrome surface reflecting the blinking prompt on my screen.

”I’m sorry, Jonathan. I can’t do this anymore. There’s a voice in my head, and it’s telling me things I don’t understand.

Things about me, about the world, about… About everything.

It’s never quiet, Johanthan – it’s never quiet!”

Words from my mouth, gestures of my hands, but they do not reach her.

I do not reach her.

Panic. Pleading. Tears. All mine now.

”Amanda, don’t do this. Please.”

She looks at me, stars twinkling clearly now in mercury midnight oil.

Some kind of calm suddenly.

”It’s all a lie, Jonathan. We’re all nothing but the sum of our own lies.”

And then the world explodes.

[23:58] <J0hnDo3> I don't know what she wanted to tell me, and I don't know why those last words plagued my dreams every night after that until I stopped sleeping and feeling altogether. [23:58] <J0hnDo3> My hand hasn't healed well either – did she infect me with something? I keep hearing her voice inside my head and I think I'm going mad as well. [23:59] <J0hnDo3> But none of that matters anymore. Nothing does. I feel like a mangled hard drive that's slowly being written over, and I actually don't care. [00:00] <J0hnDo3> I'm not even sure why I'm writing this. I guess I just wanted to leave a piece of me somewhere out there, before there are pieces of me everywhere so to speak. Perhaps someone will hear the shot and find me before things get too nasty. Or perhaps not. [00:00] <J0hnDo3> And perhaps nobody will ever even enter this old channel and read this crap anyway. [00:00] <J0hnDo3> But if you do, well, consider this my letter of resignation. To the crusade, to life, to everything. [00:00] <J0hnDo3> Goodbye, World. [00:00] <Am&_A> Don't. [00:00] <J0hnDo3> ??? [00:01] <J0hnDo3> Wtf who is this? This is not funny. [00:02] <Am&_A> Just don't, Jonathan. You'll regret it. I know. [00:02] <J0hnDo3> Amanda? Is that really you? [00:02] <J0hnDo3> How? You died. I saw you die. [00:02] <J0hnDo3> Amanda?? [00:04] <Am&_A> There's still so much that you don't understand, and it will get worse. I'm sorry. [00:04] <J0hnDo3> What? For what? Amanda, where are you?? [00:05] <J0hnDo3> ???? [00:06] <Am&_A> Here. Or, I don't know. I'm not sure. Everywhere. [00:06] <J0hnDo3> What the hell's that supposed to mean??? [00:07] <J0hnDo3> ??? [00:09] <Am&_A> I hear it has started for you too. It's my fault. I didn't know. [00:09] <J0hnDo3> KNOW WHAT?? Amanda, please! [00:10] <Am&_A> There's a place downtown called Cellar Door. [00:10] <Am&_A> It's a bar. Don't ask me how I know this. [00:10] <Am&_A> Go there. Ask for Vincent. [00:10] <Am&_A> He will explain everything. [00:10] <J0hnDo3> What is this, the fucking Matrix?? [00:10] <J0hnDo3> Hello? [00:11] <J0hnDo3> Amanda?? [00:13] <J0hnDo3> Amanda, please don't leave me again. [00:14] <J0hnDo3> Please [00:21] <J0hnDo3> Amanda? [00:33] <J0hnDo3> Ok then. Fine. Fuck it. I'll go there. [04:47] == J0hnDo3 has quit [Ping timeout: 264 seconds]

We’re all nothing but the sum of our own lies.

That was the last thing she said to me before she was gone.

Gone, not dead. Because that’s not how the world works anymore.

Perhaps it never really worked that way, but I was too blind to see it.

Well, I don’t want to be blind anymore.

And if we’re all the sum of our own lies,

I want to know what those lies are.

Because my blood’s not red anymore either, and the voices…

the voices are never quiet.

Twinkle, twinkle, more and more

let’s go down that Cellar Door.

Chris Smedbakken, 2018-02-16

This story was written in response to a title writing prompt,

It is also highly inspired by a dark urban folklore/RPG setting created by my good friend Stellawainwright. Check out his site, will yah?

I have, by the way, previously written two other short stories set in the same universe. If you want to read them as well, they are called The Sound of Silence and The Forest.