Fruition

She never could be decisive when it came to the little things, and as it often follows in those situations, serious choices were no better. She thought of this on her last day here, before she went away. She speculated that while she had time she should have chosen things out of sheer curiosity when nothing else could force her hand. She thought of the irony now applying itself to her situation, hanging here all alone. How she had finally made a decision to do something with her life.

I watched her leave, and just before she was out of my sight, just before the fire of her hair was extinguished from my view, she mouthed a few words and flashed me the dazzling smile that made me love her to death. I had no idea what she said; not until it was over.

She watched as he stood there helplessly accepting this last gift she was giving him. She knew he hated it when she gave him things, but if she didn’t give him a chance to live—

His reality began to pull away toward the horizon, the focal point on her departure; the last traces of her he would ever see. He knew she hadn’t meant to draw him into her world, that he had simply been something else for her to explore, classify, and file away.

She opened her capillaries and then her veins. She bypassed sub-routines and destroyed pain receptors. Her arteries bulged as the probes entered, and when the multiple conversion injectors entered along her jugular she knew she had only moments left to finish writing out the program, his outline, her love letter.

He didn’t really know anything now, everything he had known was rushing by in sigils and patterns. Something in the maelstrom resembled strands of red laced with flames, and he suddenly remembered her hair spiraling through his fingers as he pulled his hand away to touch her cheek. He screamed.

She had stopped checking the circadian clock that told her how long she had lived in this world of her own. She hadn’t left here since she found, perhaps created, him. Now as she became aware of her bio-systems while simultaneously loosing herself she realized that if she had waited any longer this couldn’t have worked. She became aware of the seizure overtaking the motor cortex in her frontal lobe. She hurriedly configured the characters that would carry her will past her life’s end.

He knew he was being examined and copied and re-examined and then copied over for fortification sake. He knew because he could suddenly understand the whirling language that was filling his vision. He knew that her blood was being diluted with chemicals containing bio-engineered nanites that would strip away every known impurity within a seemingly endless database, and that her DNA was being sampled and prepared for what he saw as mutilation. He knew she was dying.

When the main hollow tube entered into her spine and began alternately injecting her with nanites and then withdrawing spinal fluid and bone marrow, she became aware of her long since abandoned vocal cords savagely attempting to give a voice to the pain her body felt but that she was mercifully alienated from. She barely knew as her memories were stripped from her, and her only conscious thought as she passed into the blackness was a memory of his lips.

He opened his eyes and knew that they were made of flesh and blood. He exerted his will and instantly could tell the difference between code and neurotransmitters. His motion triggered the release mechanism and he tumbled forward and fell, feeling the thrilling misery that accompanies pain. And he saw with newly formed eyes the holographic flame rising up in tendrils that looked reminiscent of something, of “coriander”. The word held great weight, and he felt what he knew to be tears welling up in his eyes. Tentatively her reached out and ran his fingers through the light and energy projection, and recoiled as the sweetest sound, like a cold hand on a fevered forehead echoed into the surrounding chamber:

"Live my life the way I couldn't: with curiosity and vivacity, limit dreams to mere moments, and never forget the unique taste of Coriander on your tounge. Bloom and brighten the world...my Valerian dream."