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The alternate version of Pribadium was exhausted, dirty, and hurt. She never
got a chance to explain exactly what she went through, and how she came to
be in this reality. The Pribadium from this reality put her in a medical pod
to recuperate. While she fell asleep, it cleaned her up, treated her
injuries, and kept her relaxed.
Pribadium!One has been sitting next to her for the last hour, thinking about
what happened. Concurrent realities can exist. That’s how it worked
when there were five parallels, before most were destroyed in 2400. But
that’s just it—still no one seems to know what caused them to collapse.
Keeping this one may prove to be a real problem.
“Can she hear us?” Sora asks in a whisper, sitting down next to
Pribadium!One.
“No,” Pribadium!One explains. She eyes him curiously. “You’re a befuddling
man, Mr. Shimizu. When we first met, I would have been in the right to call
you an asshole, but now you’re calm, patient, and dare I say, empathetic.
What changed?”
“Nothing changed; not really,” he says. “I get this way when I’m tired. I’m
always so antsy and anxious, but I eventually run out of energy, so I kind
of shut down. Plus, you remind me of someone I once knew.” He points to
Pribadium!Two. “She reminds me of her even more, with her tattered clothes
and worn face. No offense.”
“None taken. She’ll recover.” She pauses. “Have you tried
always being nice?”
“Well, sure. When something makes me angry, I try to let it go. I’ve tried
everything, short of medical intervention, which I don’t want to do. There
was a span of a few years where I intentionally kept myself fatigued so I
would be more likeable. I was told it wasn’t healthy for me, so it’s just a
trade off. I can be nice or alert, but not both.”
“Is it the woman you wear that scarf for?” she asks. “Is that who the other
Pribadium reminds you of, and who told you to be more healthy?”
Sora smiles. “You caught me. I don’t like to talk about it, because it’s...”
“You can be honest,” Pribadium!One encourages. “You can be vulnerable.”
“It was unrequited. I was in love with her, but not she with me. A lot of us
Proxima Domanians, you know, are mortals. Organic, undigitized, and bound
for death. Many think that it’s crazy. If you could live forever, why
wouldn’t you want to? I was probably going to make the transition
eventually, but I guess I wanted to test myself first. Our ancestors never
had that choice. You lived, you died; that was it. I wanted to see if I
could make it, and if I didn’t, then maybe I didn’t deserve it. But anyway,
since I grew up with people more like me, that’s mostly all I knew. Until
she moved in. I was in my twenties, and so was she...or at least
that’s what I thought. I think she was 428 years old the last time I saw
her. It made me angry. She looked like a peer, but she saw me as a child.
No, she saw me as an ant. But, ya know, one of those friendly ants who you
can hang out with. That is what we did, and I fell in love with her a little
more every day.”
“What happened to her?” Pribadium!One asks. “You act like she died, but...”
“She did. That stream-blocking tech I used on you? It was hers. She came up
with it herself. I didn’t know why until it was too late. Before we met, she
systematically murdered every single one of her clones. She was on Doma to
kill herself. She spent all that time, secretly under the signal jammer,
so even if she was backed up somewhere, it would have been woefully
out of date. Then one day, after years of watching me pine after her, she
kissed me, went into the bathroom, and slit her wrists.”
Pribadium!One nods and sighs respectfully. “Do you want to see her again?”
