Teasing you on Apocalypse

Adam settled himself in his corner of InterSpace, wondering whether it was truly his corner or whether it was the recycled molecules of someone else’s materialization. He pulled the black crystalline walls closely inward, with the only furniture a futon he had materialized. He lay on it, looking at the fathomless ceiling, and reached out with his mind to another Archetype, one who he knew well.

I have taught Laurel how to transport. It did not take much teaching, Adam spoke, feeling the granite and heath of the Archetype he addressed.
 
What does she remember? The other asked.

She doesn’t remember much. She mindspeaks, but she doesn’t remember that she has known my signature before. She transports, but she doesn’t remember where she has transported before. She doesn’t remember me. 
 
She doesn’t remember you, the other repeated. She will not remember us, either. We need to awaken her, but there’s the chance that we damage her if we awaken her too quickly. We can’t afford that. The mindvoice spoke tersely, but Adam understood the carefully concealed swirl of emotions behind it. Emotions could be dangerous if not banked; one of the realizations of the renegade Archetype.

I want her to remember, Adam admitted. I want her to remember me.

You’re asking for a lot. She doesn’t even remember the last ten years, and you want her to remember her origins. She will, eventually, remember when we bring her back into the fold. But first, she needs to remember her exile, if not the reasons for it.

I know, Adam sighed. It just hasn’t been the same without her.

Take care of her. Adam felt the rugged edge of the Archetype’s warning fade behind his words.

Adam lay on his futon for a while longer, listening to the wooden flute he favored. He paid attention to his breathing, feeling each inhalation and exhalation, turning his attention away from the roiling thoughts.

He had learned the meditation a long time before, as a refugee from InterSpace, hiding from his heritage in a Buddhist temple in the south of China. There he learned to draw upon the unemotionality that was his heritage as an Archetype, to hide the human turmoil that represented the special circumstances of his creation.

Breathe in, breathe out. Let go of the longing, the impatience. Let go of the very human frustration. Let go  …

Six thousand years of existence, bouncing between the monastic cell of InterSpace and the Buddhist temple, and the civil service in a beautifully cultured Luoyang, and the days set laboring on the railroad that eventually stretched across the States. Hiding in plain sight despite his unearthly beauty and his freakish strength. 

Six thousand years of existence, and his mind still wandered back to one day, the day he was created, his first glimpse Earthside. A verdant landscape, with a riot of flowers, an oasis in a dry land.
The only time in his life — moments, it seemed -- he felt accepted for himself.


After a long time, Adam awoke from his reverie, and he thought about Laurel.

Laurel looked like she hadn’t aged a day. Of course she did, Adam countered; Archetypes didn’t age unless they committed evil against their charges. She had stayed pure despite her exile, despite the centuries she had spent, as he had, Earthside.

He had kept track of her when he could, staying out of her sight. He realized there was a word for his behavior in the modern day — stalker. He could not help it, however; he had been charged with her safety. And the safest thing for her those millennia was to not remember him.

She had done a fine job of taking care of herself. She had remade herself many times, as he had: as a hedgewitch, as a cloistered nun, as a nanny, a shopkeeper, a manual laborer. She had studied human cultures, much as he had, trying to find a home and never quite finding one. She had never found a partner, just as he never had, because she knew instinctively that sex would result in half-human Nephilim, a taboo for their people.

But he had been instructed to bring her back to herself gently, for reasons he didn’t understand. He felt the ambivalence rise in him, wondering if she should be left alone, wondering if she would remember him and what she would say if she did.