EPisode 13 - Doubt

There was a knocking. I don’t know how much more I need to say. It was another break in the game or in the mystery of the game more accurately. And sure there had been many, but you really can’t deny that it was the most prolific. After all, the game was supposed to be entirely text-based; it was not supposed to have sound.

(Music fades in)

I mean, right? Of course, right. Of course you are more than ready to agree that the game wasn’t supposed to have sound because I--who tells you this story--have always said that the game was not supposed to have sound. And you believed me. Now, can we unpack the reasons why? Maybe that’s going a step too far, but I guess I’ll see if you’ll still here figuratively at the end of this. If I cross a line, which I think I might be doing, you’ll turn me off and that will be that. You’ll never come back to this feed. Maybe you won’t even come back to any of my other feeds. The Oracle of Dusk, Temporal Light, etc, etc. All of that, you’ll disconnect from.

But right now, you’re here, hearing me tell this story, and you are believing every word I’m telling you that you cannot verify for any number of reasons. First of all, maybe this just doesn’t matter. Like this tale just does not matter to you, so whatever this is not something you need to think about. So you don’t think about it. And it is what it is. 

I know what that’s like. (Music restarts) For example, there’s this anecdote I like, and I mention it from time to time. That Victor Hugo was paid by the word for his prolifically large novel, Les Miserables. I say that a lot, but do I bother to ever verify it? Assuming I could, I have not. Because it does not matter. The truth behind the statement does not matter. Now this little tale explains why the book is so long. And it makes the length of that book and its meandering nature kind of funny. Also it has the sort of big writer energy I would love to be able to channel. But in terms of practical consequences? It’s nothing.

Now in this podcast, in terms of consequence? To you, nothing. Sure, there are aspects of my life that seem to be unraveling. Eyes that seem to follow me around wherever I go now. And I’m not saying that in a paranoid type way. Not in a disconcerting break from reality type way. I know the truth. You see, time hasn’t been a bit… inconsistent on the generosity front. And after so many years, one of us has quicker reflexes than the other. And for once, I’m the one who gained. For once, I have the upper hand, which is bizarre. Not sure how to make the most of this, though.

But since you’re clearly listening to this, I guess I get to gloat a little bit, which is something. 

(Music fades out) But you need to stop following me. I can catch you doing it. I’m quicker than you now. And you know you shouldn’t be trying your luck like this. For both of us.

(Extended - New music fades in)

You would think that this development was going to be an earth-shattering one on the Forum. Like those that have come before it, particularly those that involve me. And you might be expecting me to call it Level Three, right? You might think that the sudden sound, literally sound, would feel like a life altering event when even the mention of it sent us all into a tizzy. And sure, screaming is much more alarming and mentally coded as distressing than any sort of knocking sound. Knocking, you see, derives a sense of its power from its context but only from its context. A scary movie as an example. The audience knows the killer could be the one knocking, but the characters on screen do not. And so the knocking can be simultaneously frightening and not.

Maybe to you who have followed this tale from a distance, a both physical and temporal distance, the knocking is, therefore, a big deal. But to the Forum, at the time, it was not. Perhaps it wasn’t far for me to keep this from you for so long, but there was no level three. Some games just can’t progress that far. 

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

Or maybe you trusted what the internet has always been. Not in an authoritative type sense. Because pro-tip: you should not believe everything you see on the internet, and I doubt that is news to you. But you know that, but obscure corners, unexplained mysterious, basic user interfaces, that’s all par for the course. That’s part of the internet, particularly the earlier internet. Much of the creative process online has been unbounded and unexpected. And maybe that’s why you got into podcasting. Because anything can be expressed digitally. The creative toolbox is somewhat limitless. Or not limitless. There’s no external limits. It’s just your imagination and whatever your skill set is or can become with enough determination.

Open opportunities, the ability to create more. All of that is here. Figuratively here. In the wild west that is the internet. The uncapped World Wide Web. A world in its own right. So a bizarre website like the one I described, with an accompanying forum, none of it credited or attributed in anyway, its origins a mystery... Well, that’s completely possible, right? Maybe you think you remember it yourself.

And with so much time gone, I would not be expected to remember all the details. So you’d expect to only hear pieces from me. Scraps, you could also say. And it’s more common to be really bad at keeping a journal than it is to be diligent about it. 

The pieces are there. So it makes sense to you. This is believable. At face value. And you don’t need anything more than what you figuratively see. What you hear me say, I guess. Not what I could possibly mean.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

The gradual exodus off of the Forum still happened, even after the knocking was discovered. If anything, the revelation seemed to quicken everyone’s departure. Because it seemed to beg the question: what was any of this for? Were we actually going to spend a not insignificant chunk of our lives chasing little things like this? I mean, we had done so already, and look what it had gotten us. And maybe it did not even matter in the context of the game. 

See I have told you about the big developments, the one’s I’ve stumbled into. Because in a story about me and--maybe, kind of, sort of, my friend--that’s the part that matters. But there were plenty of fake outs and red herrings. Things that I did not include here. Things I could not include. Choices were made. Ones that I cannot explain to you all. But maybe you could see some of them. Understand them. For example, there was an element of time in filtering out events. Even if I could make these episodes however long I wanted or however frequent, it doesn’t necessarily mean I should. After all, we all have things to do and other shows to listen to. 

And the Funhouse Hallway doesn’t even matter to you. Whatever this story is to you, you don’t need to be as engrossed in all the details as we were. And maybe there’s something merciful about restricting the flow of information in this case. If you could believe that. If you could believe that a withholding of information could ever be justified. Or reasonable. 

I have no way of knowing your opinions. But for the record, to state for the record, I don’t think you should necessarily trust that. Or at least, you should be aware that there are pieces of information that really can’t ever be left out. These things that are, in fact, fairly critical to the story. “Why” would be a major question on that front. It always comes down to why. Otherwise known as something I cannot tell you.

Now, is my record worth anything though? Maybe you should have been asking yourself that all the while. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

The question of motivation had been floating around for quite some time. When faced with something so absurd as this exercise, it has to always be looming. It’s like… It’s like working in the nonprofit sector. Those salaries trend towards the lower end of market value, not always but often. However, it’s not like people don’t know why. 

In a nonprofit office, revenue isn’t coming in or being sought out with the same fervor as it is in a big corporation. So if you really value yourself and your labor, or need to pretend that you do, you have to have a reason why you’ve been putting up with all of it. Not quite a “take that capitalism” sort of reason but something to help you sleep at night against the fear that your employer is taking advantage of you. Because maybe they are. At least in other ways.

And well, for most people, it’s the assurance that you’re making a change in the world, right? Something that you cannot put a price tag on. It’s this belief that you are doing something worthwhile that compensates for the lack of funds in your salary. Or it’s what you think is worthwhile. And your affirmation in that is pretty important. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

But that’s a different matter. And maybe I should not have used that as an example. Because the transparency involved in working at a nonprofit negates the rest of it. The rest of the connection, I mean. On The Forum, on any internet chatting-type space divorced from names or pictures, there was no such thing as transparency. Someone would say something. You could choose to believe it. Or you could choose not to.

For me, the Funhouse Hallway and all its challenges or absurdity… Well, it was all preferable to alternatives, to my real life. It was--what I would consider to be--a valid use of my time because its frustrations weren’t literal sufferings. That was it. It was a reason, though, that was so simple as to be hard to believe on occasion.

However, Aishi had reason to believe me and my reasons for being there, regardless of what I said they were. Regardless of how far fetched it might have seemed in its simplicity. Lying was something of an impossibility as there was just no way I could hide things from them. There was no way to twist the truth and present a facade. Not in front of them. As far as relationships go, that’s a hard state to reach, particularly in the digital space, but we had managed it. Somehow. 

For all intents and purposes, that left… Well, it left Aishi and the Watchman. The Watchman was here, or there, because he was lonely in a particular way and  stumbled on a community of younger individuals who were, in various ways, lost and in search of the same sort of guidance he had in spades. It was easy to see. He was open about it. He was also open about not caring much about the game at all. 

So it should have been so easy to believe him. To trust him. I mean, I did. But to Aishi, it wasn’t.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

The final of the big three reasons you could believe the story I’m telling you, at face value, is that somehow, against seemingly overwhelming odds, you trust me. I’ve told you or alluded to the fact that this story is tailored, and you may know me from my fiction podcasting, and yet, you think you can trust me. In some ways, there’s no reason no to. I’m not asking for much. Just a fraction of your time that you can also spend doing something else. There’s no big loss here for you.

Or maybe we interact on social media, and you’ve seen pictures of my cats. Which feels… platonically intimate. Or at least is a reason you think you can trust me.

But that’s only a part of the larger picture. It’s only a glimpse. The scope of it all is the actual problem.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

Two out of three accounted for. But honestly, that’s how it may have to stay. Before then, I had never really questioned Aishi’s reasoning for sticking around. I mean, it helped their case that they were only half-heartedly present at the Forum. Unless I was involved. It had to involve me for them to care. And at first, I loved that about them. It was the first time I had ever gotten to feel important or that I mattered. It was the first time I felt cared for. And Aishi was someone who… genuinely seemed to care.

But as I sat there in my room with the ear-shattering ticking of the watch tucked underneath the corner of my mattress… Well for the first time, I started to doubt them. I doubted the conclusion my desperation had drawn up. And how could you blame me for that? Aishi wasn’t a blank slate. Only parts of them were blank. The parts I could write my own wants and needs onto. And that did not make me right. Only vulnerable.

I kept wanting to ask Aishi what was going on. I kept wanting to question them as harshly as they would often question me and… And as they were questioning the Watchman, but I couldn’t do it. My hands would drift to the keyboard, hovering over it. But they could never land. They could never find a place, never mind type out some sort of barely coherent thought.

(Music restarts)

My heart would tremble, and I could not linger at the computer desk much longer. I started pacing the room, listening to the sounds outside. The occasional siren and door slamming would stand out. But also not. By then, I had gotten somewhat used to it. As horrible as it was, the police would hang our neighborhood, in some ways it was unavoidable. It was not any less scary, but it was unavoidable. 

Like how my aunt was essentially homebound. Not because she couldn’t actually go out but because “out” wasn’t a real destination. And it was the destination part of the equation that caused all of it to go awry.

I heard the noises in the garage now that I was paying attention. The opening of that old, decrepit trunk. That loud creak. Followed by a thud.

The chair in front of the door was suddenly acceptable but insufficient. So I moved the chair and replaced it with the dresser. Now, I was effectively a prisoner until my parents got home. And that likely should have frightened me more than it did. There was no one around to keep the peace. I mean, I was there, true, but I was fairly worthless in that endeavor. I could not stand up to Aishi. Partially because I was incapable. And partially because there was so much at stake. For me.

I mean the Watchman was already doomed. There was nothing I could do about that.

(Music gradually fades out)

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.