Meditation

Time for this month's lore post, this time we take a dive into Sidestep's past, right after they escaped the Farm the second time and had made their way back to Los Diablos.

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Los Diablos, 2017

Around you, the city seethes. Was it always this loud? You have retreated underground, to the old tunnels, the place of the forgotten. The domain of the lost. Dirt and concrete helps. Or maybe distance. The claustrophobic press of the dark is held at bay by a single candle as you fruitlessly try to meditate.

Fuck. The itch on your back is just out of reach and impossible to ignore. Close enough to pain it might well be a wound healed wrong, a twisted nerve reminding you that it exist. Broken and put together again too many times, the fall from the window just the most spectacular in a long line of falls from grace. Yes. Laugh about it. Only way to deal. Push back memories of pain so blinding you might as well have been the surface of the sun. You don't even know how bad it really was, you've walked through life coddled by your pain-gate and then it broke and you were...

Were...

You bite the side of your cheek hard enough to fill your mouth with metal, not the half-remembered taste of the rubber hose down your throat. Start from the top. Catalog the pain. Identify it. Isolate it. Analyze it. Above all, breathe. No machine to do it for you. Ignore the hitch in your chest as you do, that pain is old and familiar. Maybe you need to redefine things. Pain is too loaded a word, what you're feeling now is less than you did back at the Farm, locked in that cell, recuperating despite yourself. Your throat is not sore from screaming, but from a cold you picked up recently. New strains. You haven't been among people that long, of course you'd catch every single germ. Makes staying in the tunnels a worse idea. Or maybe better. Less people. More rats. You swallow, deciding to steal some antibiotics once you're ready to dare the streets.

Maybe tomorrow.

The itch is gone, the pain added to the constant hum of your body. You spent hours working out, reveling in not being watched. Testing what you could do. Where the strains were. What you needed to work on. So much. And yet you're more whole than you feared. Three weeks without drugs have cleared your system of anything that could hide the damage done. And, to your surprise, you're functional. They actually put you back together. Range of movement, while less, is acceptable. Your muscles, while weak, are not atrophied. What little work you could do in your cell has kept you going, and now that you're increasing the strain you hope you can build yourself back up. Not the same. Never the same.

You can't let that stop you.

You breathe. Hold your breath. Breathe again. Your lung capacity is good. The only thing you could train in your cell without issue. Testing your broken ribs, your injured spine. Only half a thought that if you held it long enough you could pass out. Your body betrayed you there, wanted to be awake too much to force yourself unconscious. There were things in the dark. You hold your breath again and watch the candle. You are the flame. The ring of light around you keep the shadows at bay. Shields. Focus. You need to. Focus.

You close your eyes and invite the dark, extend your reach, and listen to the babble of the city. Indecipherable. Confusing. A million voices mumbling outside the door. Have you become so weak? Too much time under dampeners, on drugs, lost in numbness until you feared your telepathy had been forcefully stripped from you, or worse, another casualty of what made you go through that window. Have you grown this strong? You never used to be able to hear this. Feel this. DO this. You didn't realize until your chains fell away and you were truly outside again.

Much. Too much.

You need shields. Protection. Repression. No more drugs or dampeners though, you won't resort to that. You won't bind yourself without the possibility of an emergency release. Hide instead. Run. You need to do this. Master whatever you're capable of. Breathe. Find the knob to turn the city down. Like a radio. Mute it. Breathe. You open your eyes and watch the candle flicker. Your breath or a faint draft? You try to move it with your mind, just to see if that's yet another effect of what you've been through. No such luck. Just an endless row of thoughts and feelings prepared to invade your waking consciousness at every opportunity.

Don't think about the dreams.

You flex your hands, feeling the slight numbness that comes with cold and inactivity. And scars. Your knuckles still hurt, you shouldn't have hit that wall but it did make the voices stop. Pain has its uses. That's a lesson you've learned. Maybe the pain-gate was a crutch all along. To separate you from your body. To make you feel less aware of it. More disposable. Humans cry when they skin their knees. They are allowed that weakness.

You cried. Coming here. Finally. When it sunk in that you really had escaped. When you lost yourself in the human chum, hoping the sharks would be confused by everything around you. Muddy the tracks. Lose the scent of blood in an abattoir, drown yourself in minds and screams and love and fear and life. LIFE. So much. SO much. You never knew before, and know you feel too much. You can't. It will destroy you. You need your armor back on.

Were lobsters immortal? Do you need to be?

The memory is strange, disjointed, another thread that doesn't connect to you. Picked up somewhere, the aquarium murky, rubber bands on claws to keep them shut and of course the lobster is not immortal but kept for slaughter.

You press your hand against your mouth. Swallow. You will grow a new shell. Fill it. Keep your claws. Push away the things that doesn't fit. Put them in the closet and close the door. You've already done emergency surgery before coming here, cut down things to an understandable scale, you can't let yourself be overwhelmed. That was how you always survived. One step. Focus on that. No consequences. No big picture. No understanding. Then it might be too much, and there's nothing to stop you now. Nothing but yourself.

Breathe. Watch the flame.

But how can you unsee this? Can you go back to pretending you know nothing, knowing what might be coming?

Breathe. Watch the flame.

You can't afford to care. Can't afford to be emotional. You know that. You can see the chain of events like losing a game of chess. Make the wrong opening move and lose twenty later. Sacrifice. Loss. Pain. Use it. You can do that. Use it. Be smart. Bite the hand. The hand. You look at your hands, biting back a laugh because you know it would be unhinged. Can you really be contemplating this? In your state? Like this? A single broken tool?

You need to do better. Be better. And the first step is mastering yourself enough to go topside and get some more food. New clothes. Medical supplies. Test yourself. Test your shields.

Hah. What shields.

You look at the flame, watch it flicker. Watch it burn. It will go out in time. Lobsters are not immortal. You have a deadline to grow into your shell. You can't waste that trying to understand. Trying to comprehend. Accept. Heal. No time. One step. Then the next. Fuck the pain. Fuck the fear. Fuck plans. Start at square one, and if you're afraid of making the wrong move, make small enough moves that nothing need to be walked back. Insular. Isolated. Just you. One pawn. One broken tool. Don't start the game. Don't press the timer. Just breathe.

You can't afford to listen to the city. You can't afford to imagine what it would sound like if you had to listen to it scream.

Breathe. Mute. Mental hands over psychic ears. You can do that. That's a start. A first step.

The plan will come eventually.