CHAPTER 6. A Conversation Regarding Relevance

space is vast.

an unproductive statement, almost a tautology. and although tautologies can be worthy thought exercises, they become virtually meaningless when it comes down to the actual transmission of information. i believe it is for that reason most beings don’t use them in day to day parlance. the lives of the many are far too volatile and instinct-driven to want to waste time with saying that which is already true.

tautologies are, in general, reserved for stories. for narrative device. for finding new and inventive ways to tell an audience that which they already know. and at the end of the day, are not all diffusions of knowledge at least somewhat tautologist in nature? in order to recognize the value of my words, you must first know what they mean. you must predict my intentions.

but i digress.

arguments with my brother would often dissolve into such nonsense. the shouting of truths back at each other, neither of us ever able to convince the other of the righteousness of our stance. we were never meant to agree. it isn’t in our blood.

space is vast. everyone knows it, but most sentient beings in their many universes never have any way or reason to experience it first hand. even in societies advanced enough for space flight, most people will never leave their atmosphere. when they scoff at my tautology ‘space is vast’, what do they really know? nothing. as far as any of them have experienced, space does not exist.

very few have stood and looked into the abyss, the true gulf of nothingness that spreads out around the single point of consciousness adrift in a constellation. all the combined weight of sentient endeavour would quail underneath that sheer, irresistible truth. the realization that they are so small, that the universe cares about their puny lives so very little. sitting in the glowing light of the stars this becomes even more apparent

...

are we out of orange juice?

no you don’t.

i like the pulp.

i do.

i realize that jade’s situation is less than ideal from a characterization perspective, but i still politely point out that nobody likes a whiner.

i killed my brother and consumed him.

i suggest to the witch that i have spent untold eons in the void between universes, waiting for the moment i would be needed to prevent the dissipation of reality as we know it. her appeals to emotion will not help her. i will remain unmoved.

i remind the witch that my time was in the void, which is far darker and lonelier than a ship full of lizards. i add that it was also eons, a length of time that is, traditionally, far longer than three years. i ask her to excuse my pettiness in pointing it out.

i point out that this back and forth is becoming childish and if--

the audience, of course.

of course.

yes, that’s correct.

i will allow that, yes.

that seems fair.

jade looks at me with the face i have looked at in the mirror for the last few months on board this vessel without a name. no one can decide what it should be called, possibly due to the comical nature of its construction. for a while there was a ongoing list of ideas hanging in the common room, but it quickly devolved into a cluster of more and more obscure memes, until one day the knight tore it down in a fit of pique.

don’t ask me to tell you which knight. you know which one.

jade smiles. dave and karkat will always be a source of pain for her, a low ache somewhere in her center of gravity, but she is happy for them. she knows that there is really no other alternative for how to be. they chose each other over her, and they always will. they are the two people who matter to her the most in every universe, and that will not change, no matter how much she wishes it would, no matter how--

pardon me?

i experience a moment of unease as jade looks at me. keeping her out of my thoughts is proving to be more difficult than i had first assumed it would be. i had begun confident that i could keep her consciousness sleeping peacefully inside the shell of her body, tamed and quiescent, but she has proved to be more irascible than i initially gave her credit for.

ah, and here we are. i had been wondering when we would get to the prince, and jade’s knowledge of the chaos he has wrought within this timeline, and who knows how many others. i assume she realizes exactly how many resources the prince put in to keeping her still and asleep, firmly out of the game, so as to prevent granting me access to the universe, in order to foil his campaign of endless hubris.

jade knows all of this, i don’t have to tell her. she is a very bright girl, and even if she didn’t have partial access to my thoughts, she is good at compiling data and using it to fill in gaps. as she herself had rather licentiously mentioned, her brain is quite large.

and all of these reasons are why i know i can count on her to be reasonable and realistic about her situation. i need a body to continue interfacing with this timeline, and her body is the only one that will do.

i hear her wonder, what about kanaya?

what about her, jade? she is a space player, it is true, but her powers are nothing compared to yours. for one, she isn’t god tier, and for two, she is dead. a living dead, but dead nonetheless. and a sylph’s specializations lie on a different end of the spectrum from my own. a witch is a far closer match.

no, jade understands and sympathizes with my assurance that her body, and her body alone, will do for my purposes.

she does. after all, she would not wish this sort of state of being on anyone else, and especially not on one of her friends. jade may have undergone a lopsided number of narrative hardships in her life, but at least she is used to them. why spread that suffering to another? jade understands and accepts her place in the story, which has always been to enable events to play out around her, just as it has been mine.

because what is a story, truly? nothing but a series of misadventures and connections, actions spurring reactions, tumbling into one another, over and over and over. with so many competing interests, clearly the story cannot account for all perspectives, for all threads? it would be laughable, childish, even selfish, to demand that they do.

in other words, not everyone will achieve a happy ending. this is a truth that jade had come to grips with a long time ago.

jade’s body is my vessel, and it is through this realization that she will understand her true role in the story. her true relevance. if i released my hold on her consciousness, there would be no guarantee that i would be allowed in again. therefore i cannot permit her the control of herself that she so desperately craves, and she understands that.

in theory, yes.

because i don’t trust you to cooperate when the time comes.

you are, to an extent.

she is. but the truth of the matter remains that humans are capricious and emotional. and even jade herself can admit that she hasn’t been the most...committed example of her species in the last few years.

moving from lover to lover, job to job, interest to interest. over the last few years jade had found herself listless, unable to settle and unwilling to commit to anything or anyone. she knows there’s nothing wrong with that on a moral level, but on a personal level she’s always believed that she could be more, could do better. be better. and now, because of this, she realizes that sacrifices must be made.

and that she, as a space player, is uniquely built for sacrifice.

yes, jade?

she points off into the darkness. it’s nothing, of course. there is nothing here besides the two of us. this space is utterly under my control. jade could control it too, if she had any access to her own powers. but with my grip around her cortex, there is no chance of that.

i know there is nothing behind me. she is being silly. but i’m not dirk strider. i don’t mind indulging the whims of silly girls, if it makes them feel better about their situations. there is nothing wrong with humoring.

and here i make my first mistake.

up until this point, i have counted on my superior narrative power and class strength to keep her under control, but bringing her into a place where we can both physically manifest has left me, foolishly, vulnerable. when you are dealing with an epically powerful space player and former borderline omnipotent being, you forget that even with her powers stripped, she is still quite a formidable physical force. a young woman in the prime of her life, with a canine’s instincts and the fierce desire to sink her teeth into something she can tear apart.

and right now that something happens to be me.

her fingers tear at my throat, trying to find purchase. she won’t be able to kill me here, but it is certainly unpleasant, and not to mention slightly repetitive. we just saw this in the previous chapter, although this particular fight will not end as amorously as the last one did. so don’t get your hopes up.

during the ship’s trip through space, there have been numerous experiments; modifications to the nutrition output of the various machines designed to create sustenance for the various species on board. i myself have been content with orange juice and synthetic proteins, but dave and roxy have both expressed longing for various ‘earth snacks’, and so the trials and errors began.

the results were mixed. as roxy told us in a previous chapter, alchemized food all sort of tastes the same, although the visuals really help to bring about the flavor. and at the end of the day, isn’t it the journey that is more important than the destination? the stories you tell as you create the strangely flavored nutritional paste?

so far, everyone’s favorite attempt has been a vaguely peanut-butter and chocolate flavored creation called "Rices'". nobody eats them really. they just sit in a bowl on the counter.

i’m not actually sure what the witch is trying to accomplish here.

i don’t know what she is trying to accomplish, because surely she would not be doing what it appears she is trying to do. making such a meaningless threat.

jade must know that i am well-aware of her family-wide peanut allergy. a story thread that has been extremely important and weighed in on in multiple parts of the narrative. how could i have forgotten such a key detail?

but of course jade knows that. she is just being silly and dramatic. she knows that a suicide threat is utterly meaningless when made by a god. there is nothing remotely just or heroic about dying from self-imposed anaphylactic shock in the throes of a childish tantrum. at the most i’ll get a relaxing few minutes of sleep.

what are you talking about, jade? i just said--

...that’s unclear. but it certainly isn’t you.

...what.

i don’t let the witch manipulate me. i refuse to falter in the face of her whispers. without my careful planning and swift action, the prince would have taken full control over this timeline. none of my friends could even begin to imagine the turmoil.

> CHAPTER 7. Distress Call From the Closet