Fifty Four

After the record finished for the second time, the matter of who embodied the true spirit of The Smiths was back up for debate. While Fyndraxis had a wealth of experience in seeing how disappointing the universe could be, Bird had such a natural talent for taking joy in darkness that they had to call it a draw.
Here in his pocket universe Fyndraxis had dominion over many things. He was the absolute ruler of everything that happened in his realm. If one day he decided that air was a bad idea, or that gravity was going the wrong way, he could change it. These things that most people thought of as laws or constants were subject to his whim. With the briefest of thoughts, he could decide arbitrarily that his planet was now a sun or maybe the big bang should happen again.
This actually required a lot of mental discipline on his part. Being in a bad mood one day and totally scrapping your realm out of spite actually took a lot of self control. Access to this sort of power had given him insight into the biblical flood myth. In his youth, he had read Genesis and thought that Yahweh was a real asshole for letting things get so bad that he had to scrap the whole idea. Now though, he kind of got it. Everybody has rough days.
Bird was fascinated by music. This was a medium that she was completely unfamiliar with. She absolutely devoured his record collection. She was able to experience emotions in a completely new way. Instead of feeling her feelings and expressing them in her normal way. She was able to let other people who had similar feelings express them through music in new and interesting ways. She was overwhelmed.
Fyndraxis kept it mostly to music from the eighties. In this small slice of the human experience, she gravitated toward New Wave. There was something about synthesizers and reverb that she really enjoyed. Pop acts like Madonna or Cyndi Lauper were appreciated, but the darkness ran deep in her just like it did in Fyndraxis.
She even liked The Joy Division. Most people merely say that they like The Joy Division because they know what an important band that they were. Finding somebody that puts them on for actual enjoyment is a rare treat that should be appreciated and praised.
They listened to records for a long time. Fyndraxis patiently put on vinyl after vinyl for her pure enjoyment. After about six hours or so she began to get burnt out on novelty. Even with the discovery of something so huge and new there is only so much that one person can take. She began to get restless.
Fyndraxis was in the middle of showing her how utterly important The Bronski Beat was to the gay rights movement in the eighties when she piped up about it.
“Man, I should really be getting back to the yurt,” she claimed.
“Why?” Fyndraxis answered.
“I don’t know how much of this Mycellus can take,” she continued, “and we’re just in here listening to records.”
“We’ve only been in here for about half a second. I need to show you Depeche Mode,” Fyndraxis was playing dumb, he knew she was getting bored, but he wanted her to understand what this place really was, “also, I should probably teach you how to dance, I don’t know if you guys do that but it’s pretty great.”
“I know how to dance,” there was no way that this was an actually true statement from Bird.
“Yeah,” he said while grabbing yet another vinyl, “but can you do the tootsie roll? There is a song that teaches you how to do it and everything, it’s super easy and a lot of fun.”
She reluctantly learned how to do the tootsie roll. On her third “to the left” though, she went over to the record player and removed the stylus, stopping the music.
“What’s wrong?” Fyndraxis asked, but he had the general idea what was going on.
“I want to go home,” she answered, like she was on a date that had just suddenly taken a turn for the worse.
“That’s fine, you can go anytime you want. Is everything ok?” he asked, genuinely concerned. He may have pushed this little game a bit too far.
“I feel like an asshole. I didn’t get it,” tears began to slowly well up in her eyes.
“Didn’t get what?” He turned to face her.
“At the quarry,” she wasn’t actively crying, but a tear did run down her cheek, “I didn’t realize what I was doing. I didn’t know what I was really threatening you with. You are trapped in here, I can feel it.”
“Yeah. That wasn’t my favorite thing you’ve ever done,” Fyndraxis said, in perhaps the understatement of the century. He had been holding onto some feelings of betrayal and stewing on them. This was an unhealthy thing to do, but he had never made any claims that he was a balanced and healthy individual. This could be a great opportunity to clear the air between them and have a bit of a fresh start.
“I’m sorry,” she wiped the errant tear from her cheek, “I didn’t really understand what forever was. We’ve only been in here for a second and it already feels like forever. I can’t even begin to imagine how you feel.”
“I’m in a pretty vulnerable position in here,” he began, “I have to rely on somebody in the outside world to not just cast me off into solitude. It’s actually kind of terrifying. The amount of trust that I have to put into somebody that is going to wield me is absolute, I don’t do this lightly, and it’s something that I actively despise. Granted, I have no actual control over who picks up the sword and carries it around, but I think you are beginning to understand the obligation you are under here. I know that obligation isn’t something that you are exactly excited about, but I really don’t have any better term.”
“You can trust me,” she said, through glistening eyes, “you have my word that I won’t abandon you. I want this trust to go both ways though.”
“That, you can count on,” he said, doing his best to convey how serious he was about this, “I want to thank you. This relationship we find ourselves in could be a total disaster, but I think that we truly have affection for each other, and going forward, every action I take will be with your safety and wellbeing in mind. We are becoming involved in some rather large games being played by some untrustworthy characters, so if we don’t have each other to rely on, we are sunk.”
“Agreed,” she nodded, wiping away another tear.
“I also wanted to thank you for making this whole thing not boring,” he said, breaking away from the covenant that they had just made, “this Wendigo project has been a lot of fun for me, and if Mycellus comes through on a body, there might be a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s not something I’m going to count on, but it gives me a little bit of hope. I would like to see you in the real world.”
She hugged Fyndraxis again. Her attempts at hiding the fact that she was crying were in vain. Fyndraxis had been on this side of the hugging/crying equation before and knew to stay quiet and let it shake out. Words in a moment like this usually weren’t beneficial to catharsis.
She finally pulled away. It had been a short and very efficient cry.
“I’m going to go back. Are you going to be okay?” She asked, holding him at arm’s length.
“I’ll be fine,” Fyndraxis said through a chuckle, “before you go, I have something for you.” Fyndraxis summoned a chocolate truffle.
The original point of bringing Bird into his realm had been to give her and Mycellus all the data that he had on the Wendigo. They had been listening to records and generally dicking around, but Fyndraxis had been mulling over how he would actually pull off this data transfer. He had settled on something metaphorical of course. He crafted an object that she could eat, and in that action she would be absorbing the data into herself.
Because of the nature of his realm, everything was a metaphor for data transmission. Both of them were just code running on his system. They shared the illusion that they were in his workshop having a good time, but underneath the hood it was all just ones and zeros.
“What’s this? Poop?” Bird asked, disgusted. She had never seen, nor heard of chocolate.
“No,” Fyndraxis said, after a full minute of laughter, “it’s the Wendigo data that we came in here for. I figured this is the best way to do it.”
“What do you mean?” She asked.
“It’s chocolate. You eat it,” he explained, still chuckling.
“Maybe you eat it,” she said, making a sour face, “but I’d really rather not.”
“Trust me,” he was beginning to pull himself back together, “it’s actually delicious. This isn’t some sort of elaborate ruse to get you to eat poop.”
She took the chocolate reluctantly with two fingers like she was grabbing something fetid. After it passed the smell test, she raised an eyebrow and cocked her head.
“It actually smells pretty good,” she observed.
“I’m not trying to trick you,” Fyndraxis reassured her, “just eat it.”
She shrugged her shoulders and popped the chocolate into her mouth. Her eyes widened as the flavor hit her palette. She savored the experience as the data transfer went through.
“That’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” she said finally.
“See, I told you,” Fyndraxis said, “poop is funny until it’s real. That kind of prank just isn’t my style.”
“Alright,” she said, coming in for one final hug, “I’ll see you out there.”
“Bye,” he said, as she disappeared.
Before the whole chocolate thing, the outpouring of emotion from Bird was rather uncharacteristic. Either she was going soft on him, or Mycellus was having an effect on her nervous system. Maybe it was the fact that he was genuinely a sad case. Maybe they had just listened to The Smiths for too long, that would bring anyone to tears. It felt good to clear the air though, this felt like a fresh start.
His workshop was starting to be a busy place. Right after Bird left, Fyndraxis sensed the gentle knock on port 22 that let him know that Terra would like to have a word.