Episode 21 - Allegiance

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Does anyone really know what’s going on anymore? It feels like the world is… Not even spinning. At least when it spins there’s something akin to a pattern. You know what’s coming next for you, even if it isn’t ideal. Okay, it’s super not ideal. I shouldn’t really be downplaying it at all. I just don’t think any of us know how to explain where we are right now. Like, there’s no words in existence for it. 

But if I had to try: descent maybe. But doesn’t that word force us to consider what’s below. What are we descending into? The classical interpretation might be fire, but we aren’t bound by old conceptions of things. New opportunities, new thoughts, new ideas, new everything, it all comes up all the time. Constantly. 

But still, right now, we don’t know where this is going, right? Most of us have never experienced any sort of breakdown like this, a collapse of everything that we knew that never seemed to get pulled back together again. If it’s even possible. I know that life, and I can say, that… (sigh) Well, putting it back together is hard. Maybe even impossible. I’ve certainly not managed it.

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Aishi noticed I was happier than I had been, but I was also a lot busier. And so, they really care too much. They were getting enough of what they wanted and none of what they didn’t want, so that worked. And my being busy meant a lot of things. The details as to why I was so busy weren't that important. 

And so, I had this thing that helped me relax. Despite all the work the GiftedDuckling gave me to do, I don’t remember being frantic about it or stressed out. And that’s not because her deadlines on these writing assignments weren’t actually deadlines, and these weren’t actually writing assignments. Also she was pretty flexible about the whole thing. (light sigh) Really, it was just cathartic, I guess. And it was nice to have another person I could interact with.

I don’t know if you can classify our interactions as ‘talking’ whether it be talking to or at. And this isn’t a hair split meant to be critical of our online relationships. I mean, it would be pretty rich of me to go after that, right? Then again, I have a tendency for self-loathing, so I guess it would be on-brand. 

What I mean is… (exhale) I mean, it wasn’t like that. We mutually existed in a space with a couple shared projects, but they weren’t even that shared. 

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The GiftedDuckling gave me words, and I used them the best I could. I didn’t even really treat them like prompts; I just tried to stick that word in somewhere, but because they were only words, they could fit in anywhere, right? And sometimes I reused characters and places. Sometimes I rewrote stories. I wasn't being as inventive and creative as you might be thinking, but if the GiftedDuckling noticed, she didn’t say anything about it. In fact, she hardly said anything to me at all. She might have asked questions, but that was about it. And even then, I didn’t always answer them. And she never pushed.

But maybe she wasn’t trying to get me to answer them. Maybe that wasn’t her point. 

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Remember when having Artificial Intelligence bots on Twitter was, like, the next big thing in the tech center. So all these big tech companies were doing it, but then people on Twitter realized what was happening and how the bots were being trained, and then came the trolling. It took a couple tries, but then those big tech companies realized how lost of a cause this really was. And I guess they stopped trying. At least publicly. And that’s probably for the best. 

But on the other hand, there was something to be said about talking to a thing that was actively adapting to meet not just your expectations but also who or what you were. It was nice to talk to something that wasn’t just performing to my expectations but actively trying to meet me where I was. Not a performance but a transformation.

And it was like that with the GiftedDuckling sometimes. It wasn’t that she was just listening, but that something in her was actively changing and evolving to match me, to meet me where I was. To what end, I don’t know. The AI bots on Twitter didn’t have a clear goal, but the point was that they would just exist. As for the GiftedDuckling, on the other hand, I wasn’t quite sure what she was getting at. At the time, though,  I didn’t care. Which might have been bizarre considering how many times secret intentions had come to bite me or betray me in some way. But for some reason, at the time, that didn’t bother me. And look at some point, this self-destruction is pathological, but I’ll cross that bridge with a different person, like a therapist. For now, it is what it is.

I remember one of the words she gave me was ‘favorite,’ and I can’t even remember what story I might have written with that.

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The princess was sitting at her vanity, completely absorbed by her own reflection and the beauty she saw with it. So much in fact that the queen crept into the room without being noticed. The queen stopped halfway, but from where she stood, the queen could see what the princess was looking at, but rather than be impressed by it, the queen was disgusted. The princess might have seen the beauty of her outer appearance, but the queen saw the ugliness in her soul.

The queen’s heart went cold at the sight of her own daughter. How could it not? How could she not be appalled that the daughter she had bore turned out to be a monster. It filled her with so much anger. The queen hated the child. And if she were to be honest with herself, the queen always had. It was hard to know why. There was certainly no reason for it. There could never be. No mother could ever turn on her child like that, from the moment of birth and absolute innocence. There is no reason to turn on an innocent child, and without a reason, there should never be an action. So if the action happened, then wouldn’t it make sense that there was a reason there, someplace. 

There had to be a reason a mother had a favorite child, right?

The queen wasn’t sure, and yet, all the same, she acted as if she were. She leapt forward and seized her daughter by the shoulders, grabbing her roughly and turning her around.

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Unlike the Funhouse Hallway, there was no one else in Symbolic Myst that I talked to all that frequently. I guess the way the site was just didn’t lend itself to sustainable friendships. If the only way to keep the group incheck is peer moderation, then it’s only a matter of time before you start to resent your peers. And then you move on with your life. You move onto the next group or forum or whatever comes next for you. Life keeps happening after all. And in time, I too left Symbolic Myst. So did Aishi, for the record. But we didn’t really move onto another forum. 

Instead, Aishi and I moved onto another online site. A sort of casual gaming site, kind of like Neopets but ‘Neopets for kids who think they are too cool for Neopets or who want to be different for some other reason.’ But hey, there wasn’t really a chat feature on this site. Not one I felt comfortable using or was really worth anything. There was a ‘Friendship’ feature that was good for checking in on people, which is what Aishi wanted. And there were games, I guess. Okay those games weren’t really fun. They were the kind of games that… Well… You could put a tape dispenser on the space bar and get a high score, if you know what I mean. But it also meant that I could keep writing. Even for the GiftedDuckling. 

See, Symbolic Myst had elementary ‘last online’ feature as well, but it was something Aishi had never bothered to use. So Aishi had no way of knowing that I was still there.

Another word the GiftedDuckling offered was ‘family,’ and I remember she was pretty interested in that one. 

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The princess’s breath caught, and she opened her mouth to scream, but her mother’s hand landed on her mouth. It curled into a tight grip, silencing her daughter. Of course, there was no one in the shadows to hear her scream and no guard that would act against the queen or any member of royalty. And yet, the instinct remained. But it did not matter. The queen had the upper hand, in more ways than the princess could imagine.

“I know what you are, Little Girl,” the queen hissed. “I’ve always known. And I made my plans accordingly.”

The princess looked up into the queen’s eyes: dark brown and completely dead. There was no love there. In many ways, there had never been love, not in this family.

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The other thing you might want to ask about, I guess, would be my family. And well, yeah, there was another hasty move. This one to a new city within the state rather than across the country. Which was nice, in some ways. I mean, I liked that everything was a little less stressful, but that choice wasn’t made because it was easier on me. It was because Dad was finding it harder and harder to get new employment in new places. And at least that way, he could still commute to his old job. It was a long commute, mind you, but he could do it. 

Not that he wanted to. Sometimes, he would look at me, with sorrow in his eyes, and admit that he did not know why he was bothering with it at all. A home is a home, though, he would then quickly add. As if that was that.

That was another word, though, from the GiftedDuckling.

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“There’s a curse on you,” the queen whispered. “A curse on you both. If one of you dies violently, the other will too.”

The queen’s hand clenched even tighter, collapsing the princess’s mouth. The flesh of her cheeks started to impale themselves on her teeth, a mild discomfort at first, but it would only get worse in time, if the queen kept up, which is what the princess’s instincts seemed inclined to think would happen. It was all dread. It was fear for what was going to come next. After all, she had never known her mother to be like this. So she didn’t know what it would mean for her. And although her mother’s words were something akin to an assurance that she would not die that day, they weren’t as comforting as one might think. 

A curse is a curse, and the brief explanation she had gotten was painfully vague at best.

“Do you think I would let violence happen here?” the queen hissed again. “No, you got lucky that idiot general’s pride brought his daughter home and away from me. If it hadn’t, she’d be alive. But as for your brother, he is mine to protect.”

Him and him alone, the princess thought. The queen’s other hand seemed to be inching towards the princess’s throat, and that brought back a faint memory.

“I laid a curse upon you both,” the queen hissed. “His death is your death. One will not live without the other. And one death will mimic the other. Do you understand? Since the only thing you care about is your life, this will stop you from harming him.”

And it was the only way to stop her, the queen thought. The only thing the princess valued that could be taken away from her was her life. And the only force whose judgment blade could not be stopped or manipulated was magic. 

“If you or anyone kills your brother,” the queen explained, “you will die. Right as he does. And your death will be just as painful. If not more so. I have bound the two of you together. For all of your days. There is no way around it now. Not anymore.”

Indeed there wasn’t. The queen knew this. She had been the one to make the deal, but the queen was not sure if she would regret it. But the magic wielder had made promises one would find it hard to break. The spell’s incantation had been carefully devised. All things were as they needed to be, the queen hoped. There was nothing to be done about it now.

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The GiftedDuckling was particularly interested in one word: fear. But that was the only one I struggled the most with. Which you wouldn’t have expected, maybe. After all, I’m always afraid. How could I struggle to describe my oldest friend? But I guess that was the greatest problem of them all. 

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The princess hated her brother. She truly and utterly did. He was the favorite. He was the one their parents cared about: the only child in the family that mattered. And now she was just collateral, a fine tapestry blowing in the winds of the palace, the place that should have been her home but never would be. 

Even if she had been a boy, it wouldn’t have mattered. This was a matter of birthright, and he was the first born. He was the first born, and so he would have the world thrown at his feet. And she was left with nothing but anger.

Though now that she knew what the queen had done, there was a certain fear as well.

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. With music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show please consider leaving a review or posting about it on a website that might not be around in five years. Make the post vague and somewhat mysterious but still compelling if you want. Up to you.

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