Episode 10 - Joy

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Welcome back. Last time, I… No, the episode went off the rails a bit. More than a bit.

I couldn’t weave a tale together out of the scraps of information that were left when I took away the pieces I didn’t want to show you. 

But the queen is gone now. I didn’t want her. So she left. What choice did she have?

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Aishi came back almost immediately after the queen left. It was like they were watching. They had always been watching. And the second I made the right move, they swooped in to reward me for my diligence. For my allegiance.

On the other hand, I was back in the leader role, but all the same, I felt… better. That role still did not suit me at all; it just didn’t fit me. But with Aishi back in my life, I didn’t care. I didn’t care if the charge wasn’t exactly right. Now, it was mine. It was mine, and it meant that I had Aishi who was more important to me than anything in the world. That’s all that mattered. 

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If I am to be com-- If I am to be as honest as I could ever possibly be with you all, things at home were shifting too. The house--physically or the physical items with in it--had long since settled. Then again, it only takes time for that to happen, so it is not as much of an achievement. It just takes time for boxes to be opened and things to find some sort of natural place in the home. But with people, it’s different. We might never truly be settled in a new place, even if the threat of packing up and moving again wasn’t looming overhead like it always was for us.

Or usually it was there. There were rare moments when it seemed like we had finally found some place we could rest. Where maybe things would work out, and we would actually find… happiness, I dare say. It seemed like we finally escaped what we needed to. I shouldn’t speak for anyone else, but me, it was the whispers and rumors that always kept everyone away from me, that left me alone: scared and isolated. Some would say the crowds were only better at hiding their disdain, and maybe they were right. But I did not care. Because that was only one part of the issue. 

At home, shortly after the queen left, things had found a sense of peace. I wasn’t so scared. Dad and Mom weren’t so nervous. Dad talked to me about school and not other things. In fact, it might have been the first time that he seemed to acknowledge that I had a life outside the home and all its many problems. And doing so was a confession, of sorts, that things in the home were getting better and would continue to do so for the foreseeable future. And the chest was locked away, kept in some room that I had never been in. I don’t know if that house had an attic or a basement. But there was the boiler room in the garage. And maybe that’s where the chest was.

Or maybe it was finally gone. I wasn’t sure. But I really wanted to believe the latter. So I did not go searching for it. Or that was one of the reasons. There were many in fact. One, in particular, stood out to me. Like I constantly tried to get Dad to believe, I had no interest in anything that had to do with that stupid chest. It would have just been so much easier for me if it was suddenly gone. Then everyone would know that I wasn’t thinking about it. That I didn’t care. That they could stop interrogating me.

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But it was why they let me spend so much time on the computer despite the sage advice of most parenting experts. The internet wasn’t that great, sure. It had its dangers, but the chest was worse. 

So when I turned back to the Funhouse Hallway, when I poured myself deeper and deeper into the game, waiting and alone for hours just staring at the screen. They didn’t stop me. There was no telling me to go outside or to get friends. If the homework was done and my grades were decent, then whatever. Just whatever. 

Things on the other side of my bedroom door were so much worse. At least I was safe in front of the computer.

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Unlike before, I had a vague sense of the whole process, the one that changed the rules of the game, making stillness a new option. Specifically I knew about how long it had taken for a message to appear. But of course there was no need for an exact figure because we could just wait. We could leave the game running on every screen and prompt until something happened or we gave up. But we were a patient type of people. You had to be on the Forum. After all, the Funhouse Hallway didn’t give you any scrap to go off of if it did not feel like it. But you still had hope that it was coming. Because why bother if it wasn’t. And hope is as good of a substitute for patience as you can get.

So we kept trying. We went down the route we knew should have worked and strayed out to ones that previously hadn’t. During all of this and through all of this, nothing had happened. Nothing different anyway. Sometimes the game would crash, but it always did that, and who's to say why? Maybe it was the game acting up as a product of the older internet. Or maybe it was purposeful. Who is to care why, really? There was no point in losing yourself to those frustrations. Not when you can keep playing. Not when you could maybe find something of merit.

And finding other frustrations, I guess. Your game would crash, sure, but that’s something. That’s something. Not nothing. And there was plenty of (quote) “nothing” that was happening.

And during that nothing, I would lose myself in memories. “You hear the screaming,” it had said. “You should not move.” 

And it seemed like the game was taking that to heart. Because there was no movement, for us. There was no progression. Again.

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I’m launching another podcast soon. Despite still not exactly knowing what this one is supposed to be. There’s just something comforting about telling stories and not being me. Being me is exhausting, and I’m sure we would all say that. But it just feels… I don’t know. I recognize this is a problem of perspective. But it feels worse when you have to be me. Especially with Dad gone now. And the fact that some of us just carry old aches on our backs. We don’t count ourselves amongst those who have overcome the shackles or have trained so well and hard to the point that these heavy weights feel like nothing on their backs. Rather, I and others, I would guess, are left just trying to get by. Beneath this burden. Struggling each day, exhausting ourselves. Tiring ourselves.

I’m so tired.

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The queen wasn’t the only person who disappeared around this time. In fact you could almost say there was an exodus, but we could scarce notice that once again our numbers dwindled a bit with this lead that wasn’t really a lead. I mean, we could have. And maybe we should have. After all, as with anything that’s trial and error based, the more opportunities to have trials the better. But we weren’t thinking about it. Nor were we just thinking about this new development. There was someone else. 

You see, there was this person by the name of Watchman--like the item watch and an identifier of sorts, one that I am actually confident in unlike Aishi--and his visits were infrequent, at this juncture, but he was a fun guy. He was always making jokes, goofy ones. The sort of Dad-type jokes.

And that’s how we found out he was a man. Because when someone pointed out this tendency to him… Okay, it was a bit before the Dad-humor phenomenon was established. But the groundwork for that ongoing joke was still there. 

And someone pointed out that the Watchman had the same humor as their dad, and he met it with a joke: that all dads get together in groups at pubs just to share jokes. (Pause) Okay, it was funnier when he said it. But then he got serious, told us not to worry because he was none of our dads. There was no chance. Not just that we had a chance to find him if we opened up our bedroom doors and strolled to the other room. We couldn’t even be the secret products of affairs whose mothers were spirited away before they had a chance to show. 

Because there were no children in his life, and no chance for them, either. And that’s the critical point. We couldn’t be his children if he couldn’t have any after all. And he could not have any. He had a medical condition that had also caused a lot of other suffering. It was just a cluster of negativity, to be sure. 

You know, some people don’t want children, but as far as he knew, he did. It was just a choice he never got to make on the biological front. Or even the adoption front. Because his condition could flair in such an unpredictable way that he wasn’t a good candidate to adopt, even of an older child who may be left with no other alternative but to age out of the system. 

He wasn’t even good enough for those who desperately needed someone, he said. And I felt that.

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Of course that’s only if he told us the truth. Maybe it is better to assume that people are lying on the internet, especially about the sorts of stories that pull on your heart and bring about a certain reaction: a sympathetic one. But on one hand, there was no chance we would ever meet in person. This conversation was a way to fill the air as a sort of break from the Funhouse Hallway. What did it matter if any of us were telling the truth or not? There might have been an aspect of trust involved in leads, but if you wanted to troll, there were more efficient ways to do it.

But beyond that, there was something in his tone--or as much of a tone that you could pick up from a message board thread--that seemed or was veiled in sadness. It was in the way he would make an admission and then immediately make a comment--the first of twelve--trying to dismiss it. Then other eleven would alternate between attempts to change the subject or further dismiss what he said before. 

And it’s the sort of thing I would do. It isn’t necessarily hard to fake, but most people wouldn’t think about faking that bit. It just would not occur to them. And it’s the sort of thing that only experience tells you about. 

So he did have his aches and pains, I guess. So what if it wasn’t actually about a medical condition that took away his ability to be a parent on multiple fronts? He was still kind to us. And not everyone who knows suffering still treats others with kindness. And not everyone treats me with kindness.

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It’s been… odd at this new job. I feel like I don’t know what I should be doing for the entire workday, so it’s been nonstop just sitting there, waiting for something to begin. 

I just fell into this job, to be completely honest. And that might not be fair to say when you did apply for a job. I mean, obviously, then, you should expect to get it. It might not happen because not everyone can get every job they applied for. But there’s still a chance, and you should probably acknowledge the chance that you would get it. 

It’s that latter thing that I can’t seem to do. Like, it feels like I fell into this. Not by accident, though. But that I was shoved into it. I was shoved into a different department with people I don’t fully know and maybe can’t even trust at a desk next to a large window that overlooks the city. 

I don’t think those windows are tinted properly, meaning that you could still see inside of them. I mean, there’s these crows that hang out beside the window, and they act like they can see me. And with crows, it’s just better to assume that they can because they can remember stuff… But let’s say they can see me. Could someone else? Could there be a reason I’m by that window?

Or am I just being paranoid? Again.

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Aishi was not seemed bothered by my interactions with the Watchman. And yes, I’m sure you were wondering about that. I was too. At first. But Aishi and the Watchman took to each other with ease. Aishi actually talked to him, more so than they did to anyone else besides me. 

You might be aware of how much of a deviation this is for them, but also… you don’t. I know I mentioned that Aishi could be secretive. Specifically I had said that when I entered the Forum, Aishi greeted me as others had, and that was a big event. They did not talk if it was not to me or about me or a report of what we were working on when it came to the Water Plan. And that latter bit was only for my sake because I couldn’t always do it myself. They did it for me. Only for me. Everything was always about me.

But then when the Wizard left, Aishi ended up being one of the two contenders for the oldest presence still on the Forum: a position that carried a bit of weight as the memory keeper for all that came before, all those things that were frequently lost when the Forum seemed to purge itself. 

And it made you the de facto leader, but Aishi had no interest in it. So it ended up with me. Because I kept accidentally doing things. And that didn’t seem like much of a qualification. But when I was stuck with the role, Aishi would then support me. By being present. And only by being present. They didn’t feed me the information you thought they would have. And anything that only Aishi knew was lost to us. With no way of getting it back. 

Aishi just wasn’t interested in any of that. In most of us of the Forum. But the Watchman was okay. And so I felt comfortable with him.

Aishi made several exceptions for the Watchman. He was just so likeable. In fact, I don’t remember him playing the game that much at all. He just liked being there with us. And apparently that was okay with all of us. He was just so likable. That suddenly the game felt irrelevant.

Of course, it couldn’t actually be. It was always looming overhead. We had all come together simply because of it, after all. But we all were tired. This game had no winners. It was just something we all felt like we had to do. That we had no choice. At all.`This was just a current that had swept us up. And it was nice to have a break.

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or donate to the show’s Ko-Fi account.