Chapter Text
“Catherine? Please don’t leave me alone.” The modulated shiver of Simon Jarett’s voice was met with oppressive silence.
No, no, no, no…
The settling dread dissipated his spirit. In the yawning gap between seconds and eternity, he loathed her. It was unalike his previous urge to piston cracks along the Space Gun monitor; rather, an ebbing tide that shifted powerfully underneath his adopted skin like swelling undercurrents of the Abyss. Ironically, the singular emotion felt raw and bright, overshadowing his gel-induced wooziness. He felt alive: too little, too late.
It’s my project. It’s my ARK, she said. To the end, she stayed true to her word. It was hers. The only trace of her presence was a ringing malice that lingered stubbornly at the cups of his ears. He was nothing but the by-product of her success, cast aside at the bottom of the ocean.
The detached moments of companionship and sparse phrases of encouragement read as bitter lies. Jesus, he’d lapped her bullshit right up.
Prior confliction purged by a cool furore, he saw truth now, clear as day. Dangling the ARK in front of him like bait, she had goaded him into seeing the project through himself. What else would he have done? So desperate for a companion, for a second chance: it gave him the strength to inflict unspeakable agony to the scans in Upsilon and drown out his conscience with the manic desperation for escape. Faithfully led by the brunt of her manipulations, he’d pursued her selfish, vestigial desires, all for naught.
There was a certain quality to her persuasion that inspired belief. Self-confidence and conviction that came to sway minds, en masse. He was hardly the first to fall prey to her work. Despite the grandiosity in Mark Sarang’s preach of ascension, all he left behind was another incident for his colleagues to brush under the rug.
Lips twisted in bitter derision. While it seemed irrational, in comparison to this gorish Purgatory, even death would qualify as peace. Oblivion sounded wonderful.
He searched for the purpose that spurred him. The lamb-like naivety and suspension of reason. The lax fingers at his side, once curled tight against convulsing throats; throats that belonged to abominations that were well-known and loved, eons ago. Mouth curved in the satire of a loving smile, his eyes had burnt coal in fervour for an ephemeral reality. That conviction, sluggish current of blue-black blood through his system, had long bled dry.
Did Catherine ever believe in herself? Or did doubt gnaw at her guts with ever uncertain word imparted?
It was deplorable of him, but ire fuelled the flames of his imagination. His mind eked back to the memory of Catherine’s black box. The sound byte drew forth a sickening tableau with ease. Hammer swinging down in a tight arc, metal searing into soft ivory… The nausea grew down to his toes. If she was here to voice those selfish, selfish words: he would’ve made that same mistake, too.
Warring states of anger and self-recrimination overwhelmed him, ripping static from chords, ugly and bare. His being was brushed away by the easy strokes of ocean current. He no longer felt like Simon - that happy-go-lucky fantast from Toronto - only a binary of defective code that lacked equipment to procure tears. His agony remained unheard, defunct optics dry.
His sobs whispered memories of an extinct species; bluntly demarcating sorry remnants of human failure. His feelings, existence and identity: dying embers of a candle. He was well and truly alone.
His mind sparked in a hazy recollection of former ego. One that arose between grey, fluffy sheets a century ago, warmed lazy by the bars of sun that fell between wonky slats of crème blinds. That shitty existence in his cramped apartment, with inconsistent heating and peeling wallpaper...
Oh, what he would do to return to that life.
Ashley, Jesse and him, six bloodshot eyes fixated on an ancient TV box in the early hours, toes digging into the foamy give of a peeling sofa. The slanted table at the Grimoire, stained by grainy comic prints, leftover stains of pizza grease and dark rings of dried beer.
He missed them, harboured a persistent ache in his chest that made it difficult to breathe. The pictures scattered across his room, insignificant snippets of his life: a brimming mug of coffee; warm, pink toes thrust into white sand; pastel watercolour smears, blurring the meeting of sky and sea. They were joyful moments to him, once. It felt too arduous to recall those memories now.
He had held them so dearly, especially that photo, ink worn at the edges by the irritation of meddling fingers. Him and Ashley, smiling tiredly after a long shift at work, arms around each other, innocent and young. How much did he truly remember of those captures? After the accident, looking back upon those photos felt invasive; as if he was exploring the life of stranger, yet to be weighted by the heavy knowledge of mortality.
He saw it now, the sparse insights, that gradual dissolution. He’s been fading, ever since Toronto.
He aches with desperation to call relations to mind. For surely, there was more to his memory than that tiny flat. He rifled through, hoping to extract a hidden gem, entrenched deep along the grooves of his mind. But despite the strain on his faculties, it was impossible to procure any recognizable names, besides Ashley Hall, Jesse and Matt…Mike? Any face he attempted to reform in mind was confusing, veiled by artfully placed shadows. Only provided with aggravating glimpses, he’s teased by the form of a shapely jaw, crooked nose, and the sheen of delicately-rimmed glasses. Any voice he attempted to scramble together gradually regressed into imitations of static dissonance.
Memories slipped from the net of his mind like water through silt, pooling selectively in sporadic bursts, never quite enough to provide discernment. He felt as if none of the memories conjoined, as if realizing that the collection of his jigsaw pieces would only ever fit misshapen after hours of circumspect scrutiny.
Losing integral parts of himself and facing the ugly truth of his artificiality, was terrifying. Threatened by the gaping chasm of unending solitude and a futility of existence, it was that train of thought that teetered him along the fault of madness, paving way for cyclical doubt and self-critique.
This was the buzzing anxiety that tore into his nerves and composure of thought, akin the slow, torturous work of fire-ants. He felt restless, yet melancholic; alert, yet static. He was the formation of metal parts and electricity, but heaving for air underwater and mourning a life, already-lived. He existed as a bundle of faulty contradictions; messily human, yet everything but.
His chest ached something fierce. It was a physical weight that stamped his print upon the lining of his seat, solidified his limbs into heavy stone. He felt like the manuscript of his existence had been edited beyond recognition, doused blurry in water and crinkled into waste. An insignificant little mistake, gradually losing its identity and sanity at the bottom of the fucking ocean.
Optics translated the swirl of debris in the ocean. If he were offered the luxury of feeling that unyielding tide, alternating currents of heat and ice along his being - he would allow it to tear him apart, absolve him from the limbo of this tragedy. He’d allow the ocean to separate the decayed particles of Rayleigh Herber, until nothing remained besides the hull of a deformed suit. It would bring the end Simon Jarett.
No more legacy scans, no more abominations. Only never-ending silence.
It was an imagination he could afford losing himself in. He lay back, raised his gaze to the imposing column of metal that stretched until his eyes strained to see, and thought of nothing in particular at all.