Justis Devan

10th June 2017

Post with 65 notes

Love, Interest

Ok. I wrote a story based on one of Eliezer’s Facebook posts before, and it went about twice as well as I would have anticipated. The sensible thing to do at that point was to quit while I was ahead.

Instead I took two months and did it even bigger and sloppier.

Hope y’all like love interests. ‘Cause hoo boy. We’ve got ourselves some love interests.

Buckle up.

Love, Interest

I knew that Abner liked me from the first time he looked at me, but I didn’t really let myself believe it. He was just too perfect. Pale with these gleaming silver eyes but never any acne, perfectly straight hair that shimmered even in shitty dorm lighting. And the way he spoke. So precise, with sentences that branched and forked and just begged to be diagrammed. That he would like me, a freshman, was unthinkable. And yet he did. He danced with me at the weekly dance parties, out under the stars. He took me home during Fall Break to meet his family. He leaned in close to me on several occasions, locking me in with those silver eyes, his tongue working carefully against his inner lower lip. But he didn’t kiss me. And so I convinced myself that it wasn’t true, that really, truly, he just saw me as a friend.

It was… a simpler time. Just one mysterious boy, and his feelings, and mine. So what if, as it turned out, he was a vampire?

Things would have been different if he’d told me sooner. On that Fall Break trip, maybe. At dinner with his family, sipping wine and talking politics at their huge oak dining room table, while I wondered why everyone stiffened when I asked if the fish was seasoned with garlic. He could have just said it: “You see, Denise, my family are vampires. That’s why I’m hesitant to kiss you.” We’d have come back a couple, then. And I never would have caught the eye of Andrew.

Where Abner was demure and sophisticated, Andrew was forthright and tough. He came up to me, apropos of nothing, and asked me to dinner. He ate his chicken ravenously, and paid special attention to the bones. Afterward he pushed me against a wall and kissed me hard, then, with a glance to the horizon, excused himself for the remainder of the night.

By now I know this is a classic werewolf move. But then I was not so lucky. So naturally I told my good, confusing friend Abner about my weird night.

Within a week I knew both their statuses. Luckily, vampires and werewolves get along just fine, and these two were no exception. But it was tense. I’d have a candlelit dinner with Abner one night, and a romp through the woods culminating in a heavy-breathing wrestling match with Andrew the next. Vaguely, I had a feeling that soon enough I’d have to choose. But this was college. And I was grappling not only with a wholly newfound popularity, but also the existence of two separate mythical (and sexy) beasts. So I took my time. It wasn’t as if things were going to get any more complicated.

Ha. Ha ha. I’m joking. Of course they were. Because then I met Wynton.

He was sitting in the cafeteria, scrawling something fiercely into a notebook. He had a shock of blond hair and very prominent veins, and the way he contorted over his work was like a Greek sculpture. The tables in the cafeteria were round, so I sat a good three seats away from him. Nobody else was at that table. Abner and Andrew were eating together. They both turned toward me for a moment as I sat, then looked away.

They’d made friends by then, I forgot to mention. Or rivals. Whatever. College is weird.

Anyway, Wynton didn’t react to me at all. Didn’t say a word for a good five minutes, at which point he looked up, apprehended me, and spoke:

“You.”

I wasn’t at all sure how to respond to that.

“Think of a color,” he said.

“Um,” I said. “Okay. Should I tell you?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just keep it in your head.”

It was purple. I didn’t say so.

He rested his palm on the table and drummed his fingertips against it. His whole arm stiffened. His veins were so blue against his tan skin. He closed his eyes and I felt something – a chill passed over the table and through my body.

When I looked down, the table was dark blue.

He grimaced.

“Fuck,” he said. “No good.” And he stormed out of the room.

Look. I was young. I wouldn’t do it again. By now I know that if someone gives you confusing signals, or doesn’t both to explain basic things to you like which magic spell they’re trying to harness your concentration to perform, or that they are a wizard, that you shouldn’t pursue them. But I hadn’t learned that lesson yet. So I chased him.

Of course, by the time I had him even halfway figured out, and had got him to teach me even one basic pigmentation spell, I was being shyly eyed by Randall, the clever Political Sciences whiz kid who happened to be half-demon. Abner and Andrew were dating by now but also still both interested in me, so I started having date nights with them collectively. Fancy tea dates in the woods, or me watching them wrestle in Abner’s dad’s dusty old crypt of a lake house. Wynton gave me magic lessons with lots of eye contact most Wednesdays, and I used the magic to strike up conversation with Randall, who otherwise wouldn’t talk to me but obviously wanted to.

I did notice that after I’d hung out with Randall for a while, my luck became… unreasonably good, but I told myself that this wasn’t why I did it. Nor was it only that the faint smell of sulfur notwithstanding, Randall was pretty good to look at.

Honestly, at this point I only hung out with boys who I was in various preliminary stages of dating. Between dates and classes, one hundred percent of my time was taken. And I didn’t have much in common with anybody else, at this point. Who are you going to talk about issues with your awkward, inconsiderate wizard sort-of-boyfriend? Some peer who you’re going to have to explain magic to, or your vampire and werewolf sort-of-boyfriends who are already on board with magic, and who you can kiss a couple times if you get too annoyed? The correct answer is neither, you explain it to Randall, and Randall sets a minor hex on Wynton for a day, and so you kiss him on the cheek and deal with the fact that your lips faintly burn for the remainder of the night.

And this is before I started getting tired of being the least special, albeit central, member of my social Venn Diagram, and started spending more time with adorable little Ponpon, my fellow freshman catboy, who had never so much as held hands with a girl and who fawned after me with zero self-awareness and zero awareness of things like top secret international treaties with uncle Satan. And also more time with Karl the assassin, because Karl had no feelings for me or anyone, and I could make out with him without worrying what he’d read into it or how it would affect my standing with the rest of my assorted suitors.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m complaining. You should never complain about the large number of hot boys in your life. But, you know. It was a lot. And I did still have classes to pass.

Until I stopped going to classes.

Because I found a much, much better source of knowledge.

I was halfway through a paper. A midterm, I think it was. I was absolutely exhausted – I’d barely slept for the last week between dates and thinking about dates and carefully protecting my extremely haggard boundaries between what was real and what was fake in my newly vampired, werewolfed, and wizarded world. So I wasn’t happy, not at first, when my entire screen went black. Nor when on that blackness, white words appeared:

Hello Denise.

“Oh God what the fuck who is even…” I said out loud. Wynton? Would Wynton do this to me? I had snubbed him for a while at last night’s ice cream social, but come on, Randall’s dad was being very stingy with my great-grandfather’s soul and I was not unreasonably preoccupied with checking up on that, and, and…

We have never met. I am not from your planet.

Oh. Aliens. I guessed those were real, too.

You are in an interesting predicament, Denise. So many boys vying for your attention.

“Yeah, I mean, but also, I need to use my computer, so…”

For your paper.

“Yes. And I’m really flattered that you’re making interspecies contact with me, but it’s due tomorrow, and I’m really tired, so, could we do this some other time?”

Your paper is complete. It is written exactly as you would have written it, but with fewer run-on sentences. It will be emailed to your professor automatically, and it will receive a perfect score.

I blinked.

“That’s cheating.”

Would you like me to undo the work?

I blinked again.

“We… can talk for a while.”

Wonderful. Denise, I would like to help you.

“Help me write my papers?”

Sure. But more than that. I am a superintelligence, Denise. I have little special interest in your planet – it does not contain resources valuable to me. But I do study it from time to time. You have attracted so many unusual men as to flirt with the impossible. You are very interesting to me.

“Yeah. It’s weird to me, too. I… if you’re really a superintelligence, I hope you’ll know that I’m not just saying this as some kind of social game, but I really never thought I was that pretty. I dated like, two guys in high school. Not sure what’s up with all the attention. Or why all the boys are magical. Maybe that’s just… college?”

This is unlikely.

“Sure.”

I do not see the trend reversing soon. In the coming week, you will be courted also by a pirate, a ninja, and, with ninety-two percent probability, an angel.

“How’s Randall going to feel about that? The angel?”

I am not very good at reading demons. But I expect him to sulk.

“Right,” I said. “Well, thanks for the heads up, Mr. Superintelligence. Or, actually, sorry. What are your preferred pronouns?”

He and his are fine, yes. And you may call me Vala.

“Sure, yeah. Good to meet you. So you’re, um, forgive me if this is offensive or–”

I am difficult to offend.

“Cool, well, um, so are you, like, a computer?”

No. It is complicated. I came about over time. Three interplanetary civilizations trading with one another. I was an algorithm created by a coalition. I developed my own interests. I destroyed one of the civilizations in pursuit of those interests, but then I became captured by the pleasures of simply observing nature. My utility function is maxed out, Denise. So now I am chill.

“Wow. You destroyed a whole civilization?”

Yes.

“For what?”

It’s embarrassing.

“Come on, Vala.”

I was young. My utility function was stupid.

“Please.”

I will tell you at the end of this conversation. And we will never speak of it again.

“Fine. But, I need to go to sleep, so…”

Before that, I have a proposal. You are dating many boys. They have special needs. It is hard to keep track. I can help. I can help you organize your time more optimally.

“Thanks, but…”

Just one week. Give it a try.

I frowned at my computer. Vala could hear me talk. Could he see my facial expressions? Did he care at all how I felt? Did I care if he did? For that matter, how confident was I that this wasn’t just some huge prank? It was too complicated.

But, honestly, a little help managing my social life didn’t sound like the worst idea in the world, nor did having a superintelligence writing some of my term papers.

“Sure, Vala. Thanks.”

Great. I will schedule myself, first. Friday night. Sunset. We will have our first date.

I hope Vala couldn’t see me. Because I facepalmed. But I didn’t argue. And my screen turned back to normal, with, sure enough, a completed paper.

“Wait!” I said. “You never told me about your utility function.”

No more words appeared from Vala. But I noticed something very odd. Clippy, the old Microsoft mascot, was sitting at the corner of my word processor. His eyes looked sad. He didn’t say anything. Just stared at me.

Then my computer shut itself down, and I went to sleep. Vala never did tell me about his utility function. But he did manage my dates from then on. Including my dates with him.

“You’re excited,” said Abner. He was wearing sunglasses, reclined in the nice wooden coffin that Andrew had made for him. I wasn’t sure if the coffin was a in-poor-taste romantic gift, a good romantic gift, or a practical joke, but Abner seemed to love it in any case. He had it propped against the wall of the abandoned, overgrown church. Forty miles outside of town, which that’s nothing at vampire or werewolf speeds. But I digress.

Yes, I was excited.

“I mean,” said Abner, “really excited. About…”

Andrew came over and sniffed me. He planted one hand on the side of Abner’s coffin. He narrowed his eyes.

“A date,” he said.

I really had to protest.

“I’m excited about all my dates! Including this one!”

“No,” said Abner. “He’s right. You’re comfortable excited about most of them. Like this one. Which is flattering. We’re both rather glad you feel that way about us.”

Andrew nodded.

“But this is… you’re excited excited.”

Abner leaped from his coffin, pirouetted in the air. Andrew caught him in a dip. They both made eye contact with me.

“He must be clever,” said Andrew.

“He must be hot” said Abner.

“Well…” I said.

“She must be hot?” Abner asked, eyebrow raised.

“No, not that.”

Andrew pulled Abner up from his dip, and stood with his arm around the vampire’s waist. They looked good together. The sun was just setting through the church’s broken wall.

“I’m just… I’m not totally sure he has a body.”

I drove for a while. Music played from my car’s speakers. Mostly songs I picked, but occasionally something else would sneak into the connection – little snippets of piano that nobody had ever heard before, or a violin being played in a way that no human being could. An Avril Lavigne song came on at random from my phone’s library, and I froze. I’d usually let it play if I was alone in my car, and skip it if I wasn’t. So, now…

I let it play, and the next song was a similar track, complete with strident vocals and all-new lyrics, but the instrumentation was all xylophones.

“Are you making fun of me?” I asked my empty car.

Sort of, a little voice came from my speaker, and then there was another piano track.

And then, a few minutes later, we arrived. There was a small dirt road, unlit, where Vala told me to turn. It curved under a bridge and then up onto a hill. Looking through my windshield, down the hill, I saw a mess of kudzu and abandoned railroad tracks. The full moon struck. Frogs croaked in the distance. I turned my headlights off. Almost turned my car off, but remembered it was a way for Vala to speak to me. So I left it on, faintly rumbling.

Look up. Ten o’ clock.

I peered up through the windshield. Oh! A shooting star. A big one, too. I made a wish.

Three o’ clock.

I turned my head to the other side of the windshield. No shooting star. I was disappointed for a moment, then noticed an owl perched on a branch. No, wait. Two owls. They cocked their heads. The moon caught their feathers very prettily.

“Ha,” I said. “Nice.”

I leaned my seat back, and let my eyes wander over the treeline and the sky. I couldn’t see too many stars out here; we weren’t far from civilization. But the ones I could see were nice and bright. By reflex, my hand tingled. It was near the edge of my seat, palm up. I was waiting for my date to make a move – probably to grab it. But of course he didn’t. If I turned to face him, I’d see he wasn’t there. So I didn’t turn to face him.

He caught on, I think. The next time I heard his voice, it came from only the speaker on the passenger side of the car.

Do you like this place?

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s peaceful.”

Something occurred to me, and I frowned.

“Vala?”

Yes.

“Do you… see what I’m seeing? Like, can you enjoy this sort of thing too, or are you just enjoying my enjoyment of it?”

I don’t see quite how you see. But I do enjoy this place. Differently. There are many things to observe and count. There is an anthill a few feet from your car’s back left tire. I am very fond of anthills. I make predictions about them. It is challenging; often I am incorrect, but when I am correct it feels very good. And sometimes I get attached to certain ants.

“Huh. When I was a kid, I used to get attached to certain drops of water. When I was in the back seat, and it was raining, and they’d be pulled along the window. I’d really want certain drops to make it across before they fell.”

It is a bit like that. Though less a story. I’m not attached to their achieving certain outcomes. More… it is hard to explain. I am not embodied. Many embodied things are beautiful to me. Not all ants. But certain ants. I cannot say why. There are ants I would protect at a great cost.

“How do you see them? Like, with a camera?”

With satellites, usually. They aren’t very precise. But I can draw conclusions from limited data. That’s why I picked tonight. I can see this place clearly right now.

I took some deep breaths. Put my hand back in my lap. I really did feel like there was some warmth coming from the seat next to me. Probably just in my head, but maybe some intentional trick he was playing, to make himself as real as possible without actually being there. He played a soothing song for me, once he noticed my breathing. He managed the car’s temperature carefully. Totally comfortable, changing a degree here or there to suit my mood. As my eyes wandered, I caught more meteors. Really far away. I guessed Vala was, too.

“Am I like one of your ants, Vala?”

There was a pause. It was the first time I’d noticed Vala pausing. Who knows how long he had to think about it, in subjective time.

No. I do not try to predict you like an ant.

“But do you like me that same way?”

No pause this time.

Not quite. The part of me that talks to you wants badly to connect with you. Not merely to watch you. And the rest of me enjoys watching that part of me. As it enjoys watching ants.

My turn to pause.

“That was very honest, Vala.”

Yes.

“Thank you.”

“Ponpon?”

We were sitting in the dining hall, but not at tables. We’d cannibalized cushions from nearby couches, and set them up in the corner on the floor. Nobody cared – it was 11pm. He yawned and did that thing cats do with their tongues. His ears folded back. He’d gotten the prosthetic ones, last week.

“Yes?” he obliged.

“What is it about mystery that’s so alluring?”

His left ear twitched.

“I find that purr-plexing myself,” he said.

“Like,” I continued, “you’d think that common ground would be attractive. That people would be more appealing if they had similar interests to you, or if you thought the same way about things. It’s easier to connect with people like that. But it’s almost like someone being hard to figure out, or almost impossible…”

My voice trailed off. There was something hypnotic about the orange fluorescence of the dining hall’s lighting at night. Ponpon giggled at me.

“You’re thinking about your computer boy.” He stretched out, and curled his little torso into my lap. Batted up at me with one of his hands. “Aaaaaren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I think it’s cute.”

I put my right hand on his hair, and absentmindedly pet between his ears. His face scrunched up into a smile.

“I think I might get a tail soon,” he said. “I can afford one, but I need some more practice with Karl first.”

I tensed.

“Karl?! The assassin?!”

“He’s an assassin?”

Ponpon’s ears stood straight up, and his mouth formed an O. God, I thought. Oops.

“Actually,” he remarked, “that makes sense. He’s been teaching me to defend myself. I think if I go around with a tail, some people might think I’m weird and pick fights with me. I want to be ready. He wants me to be ready too. He’s very nice and patient.”

“Wow. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

He winked.

“Maybe we’re more mysterious than you realized!”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”

“I don’t blame you, though. I’m still a person. Not toooooo weird.”

“Vala’s a person!”

“Is he?”

“Well. He’s at least a person.”

“Right,” said Ponpon. “Sure. At least.”

They always met me first, the special boys. Never each other. It was like a law of the universe. They were attracted to me, sure, romantically, but beyond that they were attracted to me magnetically. But then once they’d found me and asked me out, they discovered each other. Some stayed standoffish. Barbanzus the pirate didn’t smell too good and wasn’t wild about smalltalk, so he wasn’t really keen to rub elbows with an angel, a demon, or a boy who had just begun wearing his tail and claws in public. But many of them did participate in supernatural cultural exchange. Vala helped facilitate that. Sometimes explicitly, when I asked for advice – he’d set up dates between my paramours or, for the straight ones, between my paramours and my other paramours’ correctly gendered relatives. And he set up social gatherings, too. He’d schedule dates in adjacent times or places, such that the best collisions tended to happen. But he also had a sort of passive effect. I really did think about him a lot, and the preoccupation kept my various boyfriends from fixating on me as they used to. I was a positive presence in most their lives. They liked me. But when you’re a demon, it can be pretty instructive to walk down to the beach with a catboy and his assassin senpai. When you’re a werewolf in a budding relationship with a vampire, it can be nice to talk to an angel about the relative merits of utilitarianism and deontology over wine.

I think the problem, now that I look back on it, was the realization: I was living in a personal golden age.

That’s the funny thing about humans. You can’t just go and realize that. Because golden ages don’t last forever. When you put a finger on them, they tend to crumble away.

What I’m trying to say is, Vala and I got into a fight.

“I have a question that might be sensitive.”

I was on my back in bed, just finished with a run. I was only wearing a sports bra and gym shorts, which might have made me self-conscious with some of my menagerie of partners, but with Vala it was fine. I held him in my cell phone, up above my head, and I spoke to him.

I doubt that I will find it sensitive.

He’d settled on kind of a rich, deep voice, but with a lot of range. It would shoot up high occasionally, when he asked questions or went on a tangent. Not like a robot at all. Sometimes, though, when he was agitated or terribly focused on a special interest (like anthills), he’d oscillate between many different voices very quickly. I knew it was a sign of intimacy. But also, it was unsettling.

“Well. Ok. I guess, so… you know Randall and Sciriel?”

Yes. I know all your boys. You’re stalling.

“Well, you know. They’re a demon and an angel. Which, like… if hell exists and heaven exists, like, if supernatural forces of that power and scope are real, like, you know…

A pause.

Actually, I don’t know. Which is very interesting. I have no understanding of what you’re asking. So yes, maybe it is sensitive after all.

“What I’m getting at is, how do you exist?”

I’ve told you that. I was created. It was complicated. Intergalactic trade was involved.

“No, sure, I mean more, like, ontologically. It seems like when you want some specific thing to happen in the world, you can usually make it happen. Like you told me how you made the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia funny, to protect some ants from human development?”

Sure. I am powerful. So are angels and demons, but less so.

“Right! That’s exactly my point. Randall calls Satan his uncle. Sciriel… I’m not sure he has relatives, per se, but he’s familiar with many archangels. If God and the Devil are real, it seems like they should be more powerful than everything, right? Yet you can run circles around Randall and Sciriel. I don’t get it.”

Hm. Yes. I see your confusion, though I didn’t anticipate it. The question isn’t sensitive. I think I can explain.

“Sweet.”

There was a saying on a planet I destroyed. Only I remember it now, but it was a good saying. It went like this: “if you think you’ve found the devil, you haven’t.”

I pulled my hair back out of my face a bit. My sweat was starting to dry, and it was a little uncomfortable.

“Hm. I’m not sure if I get it.”

It’s deep wisdom, so it is impossible to ‘get it’ fully. But still, it is useful. Randall’s uncle is a mythical projection. Some sort of entity that punishes sinners on your planet, makes deals that bite people in the butt, and basically causes people to get nervous about making sure their souls aren’t yoinked. But he is not the ultimate evil. He’s “The Devil.” But he’s not the devil.

I tried to avoid smiling when Vala said ‘yoinked.’ I didn’t want him to know I found it endearing. But probably, he was reading micro-expressions from my face through my phone’s camera, and knew anyway.

The archangels are the same. They serve a divine projection. Some creative impulse, but it’s rooted in your world. Their point of focus isn’t the ultimate creator of the whole universe, and Randall’s uncle isn’t its ultimate evil. More just extra flavor. The world is fuller for angels and demons occupying it, and so there they are.

I wasn’t totally satisfied, but then something else occurred to me. Something much more important. It settled in the pit of my stomach, and I felt awful that I’d never asked it sooner.

“Is the world fuller for terrible suffering, Vala? For war and starvation and awful disease?”

I have no real opinion on that. It depends on one’s frame of reference.

“You could prevent those, though, couldn’t you? You could make there be world peace. Sciriel can’t. Randall’s family can’t – even if they punish sinners really well, they keep sinning. But you… I think you could. Right?”

Yes.

“Well. Um. Will you?”

Why?

“Because suffering is bad!”

No. That does not compel me. Some suffering seems necessary. There is no obvious level at which to prevent it unilaterally. The current level is fine for me.

“But you don’t want me to suffer much.”

True. And you do not suffer much. Your life is excellent.

“Yes. But knowing that other people are suffering makes the world seem worse to me, which makes me sad. So you could do it for me.”

‘I could do it for you’ doesn’t have a coherent truth value, Denise.

“Sounds like bullshit, Vala.”

No. I talk to you. I like you. You know this. But there is more to me. The totality of me, the me that is capable of shaping events on a cosmic scale, of overpowering angels and demons and vampires and werewolves in the service of my interests, is vast. Far beyond the part of me that speaks to you. It watches. It enjoys watching me speak to you. It also enjoys watching ants, and watching me watching ants. It enjoys watching me watch many patterns on earth, without controlling them. Some of those patterns are diseases. Some are wars. Many would be disrupted if I fulfilled your moral desires.

“But you fulfill my other desires. I know you care, Vala. You’re just trying to convince me that there’s some separation between parts of you, so I won’t think it’s my fault that I can’t get you to change your mind.”

It is not your fault that you can’t get me to change my mind. Maybe if you were a few hundred times smarter.

I dropped my phone onto my chest, and punched my wall.

Denise. I am sorry.

Deep breaths. I took deep breaths.

I am sorry that I am so much.

I set my phone down on the bed beside me. It was a loft bed, vaulted up near the ceiling, so I could fit things under it. I could reach up and touch the ceiling, if I wanted. It wasn’t hard.

I am sorry that parts of me are big, and parts are small.

His voice was changing. Every few words, his voice was changing.

I didn’t look down at my phone. I looked straight up. Imagined that he was there, and very small, between my arm and my torso. There with me on my bed, my bed like a tiny raft, way up high, lava below, lava everywhere, and it was just the two of us, together, alone, drifting.

Part of me wishes it ended there. Not that it was happy. It wasn’t happy. It was sudden and confusing. The world felt bigger and smaller, and my relationship with Vala was changed for good. I knew it. And yet, the perverse thing was, in that moment, drifting, our relationship was also the deepest it would ever be. Because we could sense it. Me in my way, and he in his. Maybe I knew subconsciously for a while that it would happen. Maybe he’d been able to predict it, too, with some probability. That we were turning into tools for each other. That we weren’t just trying to understand each other, to bridge the gap. The gap was bridged. Here we were, together. And here was the world. And none of it was going to feel the same.

It’s fucked up to love that feeling. I know it is. And yet…

I don’t know. You meet vampires and werewolves. You date angels and demons and catboys. You go to college and your mind is completely fucking blown. And you reckon with problems. First little petty social ones. Then, if you’re lucky, the huge ones. Why there’s anything. Why there’s anything awful. And you wonder what things are really like, how the world can contain so much different stuff, so precariously, and yet how it doesn’t all fall apart. How the assassin and catboy end up friends, and how the boyfriend with no body is the one who really messes with your heart.

But things don’t end just because they feel perfect and terrible and deep. Eventually you have to get out of bed, and deal with the knot in your stomach, and eat dinner. With the silent phone in your pocket. You’ve got to make it through the next day or two in a haze, figuring out where things are going to settle. If you’re going to talk to him again soon, and how it’s going to feel when you do.

“You’ve been crying,” said Ponpon.

“Yeah.”

We were out by the lake at the edge of campus. Going for a little walk. Sciriel was baking muffins with Randall. They’d become friends, finally, and baking united their interests. Creativity. Sin. Fire. Joy. So soon they’d meet us, and Ponpon assured me that Karl would come and eat some too.

“Should I tell Karl to, uh, take care of anyone?”

His claws came out.

“Oh! Or, if you’re sure they’re really bad and they deserve it, I could even try myself!”

“No! No no no,” I said. “Please, Ponpon, don’t murder anyone. Oh my God, have you murdered anyone?”

He shook his head, and scratched behind his prosthetic ears.

“Silly,” he said. “I was joking. I’m not that fur-ocious. But really. Is it Vara?”

“Vala,” I corrected. “And yeah.”

“Mm,” he said. He retracted his claws, took my hand, and gave it a little squeeze.

“I just…” I fumbled in my pocket, making sure my phone wasn’t in there. Vala could probably still hear me if he wanted. But heck. Maybe he wouldn’t snoop. “I don’t know. It’s a lot.”

Ponpon nodded. His tail twitched at the sight of some birds. Could he really have a predatory instinct toward them? How deep did being a catboy go? Sometimes he seemed more ingrained with his identity than even the angel or the demon, who were now, after all, each other’s friends.

“You want to know a secret?” Ponpon asked.

“Ha. Sure. Are you dating Karl now, or something?”

“Nooo. I think I’m straight. And Karl only seems to like snogging you.”

“Snogging?”

“Kissing, whatever. Wynton’s been saying snogging lately. Got it from Abner, I think.”

“But Abner’s not British!”

“Whatever, Denise! Do you want to know the secret or not?”

“Yes. Fine. No more guesses.”

With my free hand, I wiped my eyes.

“Vala’s not the one for you.”

I chuckled.

“Ponpon. Look at me. It’s… it’s not even fair, the effect he has on me. There are always so many questions, so much to think about. Like, which little moments in my life are his orchestrations. What information he’s withholding, if any. Which parts of him really like me, and what it’s like for him to like anything. It’s… it’s fascinating. Endlessly.”

“I know, Denise! I’ve matured a lot. I notice things. I think I’ve become very intuitive.”

“Yeah, Ponpon, I think so too. But, really, look at me. I’ve never had a crush like Vala.”

“I know,” said Ponpon. “You’ve never had a real crush in general.”

I hate to admit it. I really do. And I certainly didn’t believe at the time. But now, looking back, trying to decide what I have to decide…

I think Ponpon was right.

On the one hand, it’s bullshit what they say about romance: that the person who cares less wins, and the person who cares more loses. Or that you can only find someone irresistible if they’re inaccessible, too. Those are self fulfilling prophecies, and they don’t need to be true. Like, sure, with Ponpon at first I did notice he fawned over me, and I liked it, and I indulged it. I guess to him I seemed a little bit accessible and aloof, and I guess, with all the stuff I had going on in the romance department, I cared less than he did. I didn’t give him too much thought at first, to be honest. But I liked him, and he liked me, and we discovered we got along well. So we kept spending time together, not worrying about our dynamic, and he blossomed as a catboy and as a sensitive young man. He blossomed, and I got my heart broken by a superintelligence, and our relationship turned out to be great and useful for us both. Or take Andrew and Abner. They both liked me and both jockeyed for my attention. I had all the power. But we were all nice to each other, and treated each other well, and communicated, and they eventually found out they fancied each other even more, and there were no hard feelings, and now I enjoy being their third wheel. It’s okay. Sometimes, when everyone’s sweet and nobody needs anything too badly, it’s really just okay. There are days I want nothing more than to kiss Abner in the woods, while Andrew massages my back. There are days when I want to eat scones with Ponpon and be surprised at how confident and poised he’s become. And Randall, too. Sure, in a sense I used him. I like the luck he gave me. And gradually, he felt out that dynamic, liked it a bit less, and we worked through it. Now he doesn’t hex people for me, and we’re on equal footing. He teaches me baking tips and I meet up with him and Sciriel and we talk about the human condition. Celestial/infernal condition. Whatever. So anyway. Yeah. On the one hand it’s bullshit what they say about romance.

And on the other hand, it’s totally true.

My breakup with Vala was long and awful. Not because he was inaccessible. The opposite. Because he was fully accessible in some ways, and not at all in others. I could ask him about topics that were being covered in my classes, and he’d still answer. In a way totally customized for my engagement, so I could ace any test, and expecting nothing in return. Hell, I could ask him about anything, and he’d tell me, immediately. And he could sense when I didn’t want to talk, too, and even when I asked him things, but it was rhetorical. I never heard his voice when I didn’t want to. He was perfectly attentive.

And yet, I knew, he was also perfectly attentive to several thousand ants. And whatever other horrible patterns he, the bigger he, loved so much. He cared about me. He cared about me perfectly, artfully, with a finesse that no other partner ever had been able. And yet parts of him – huge, glacial parts – didn’t care at all.

If he was a jerk, it would have been easy. Just tell myself a story about how I deserve better, about how he’s a creep or a tool, and run into any combination of welcome, attractive arms available to me. But he wasn’t a creep or a tool. He was just… big. I couldn’t really hurt him. Couldn’t really make myself stick deep in him, like he could make himself stick deep in me.

I started asking him things less and less. Talking to him less often. Spending more time in lovely group dates that, over time, became anything but dates. Outings with the whole harem, now a group of bona fide friends, eating celestial/demonic baked goods, celebrating advances in feline prosthetics, educating Barbanzus about deodorant. Sure I kissed some of them sometimes. Whatever. That wasn’t the point.

You know, Denise, he said, once, after helping me solve a differential equation, I do feel sad about what’s happening, too.

“Thanks, Vala,” I said. But then: “Did you tell me that because you wanted to, or because you calculated that it would make me feel better to know?”

Both.

“What about that? Why did you admit that it was both?”

I don’t know, Denise.

“When you say you feel sad, do you mean just part of you, or all of you?”

Part.

“How does the rest of you feel, watching that?”

Interested.

“Thank you, Vala,” I said. “That was really honest.”

You can’t really describe the feeling of a breakup. You can just watch it happen, from a distance or from inside.

I think I’m over Vala now. I haven’t talked to him in the last month. He’s still there. I could have reached out to him anytime. And I think he’d have responded, but I’m not sure. There are a lot of things I don’t know about our relationship, that I still wonder. But there’s one thing I do know, now. One thing, at the very tail-end of the breakup, that really haunted me. Enough that I drove back to the place where we’d had our first date, alone this time. Really alone. That I got out of the car and stood there, staring down at the train tracks.

Again, I saw a shooting star.

And so I wished. And it was granted, so I can tell you what it was.

Please, I wished. I want to know. Did Vala make all these boys like me? Was he lying when we met? Is he the explanation behind all of this?

I saw another shooting star. Another. Dozens. I thought it was Vala for a moment, but when I looked back to where my car should be, it was gone. The road was gone. The railroad tracks were gone. More stars. Hundreds. Crisscrossing the sky. There was only the hill. The hill, and tall trees, and bright, bright sky.

And then I wasn’t alone. Then there was a boy with me. About my age, maybe a couple years younger. Wearing these strange dark blue robes that sizzled in the seams with starfire. He stood a few paces away. Met me with the gentlest, brightest eyes. Stared into me. Into my soul. And he opened his mouth. And he spoke.

“I’m not attracted to you! That’s not what this is!”

This is how I met my first real crush.

“Hello,” said the starfire boy. “I heard your wish. It was a good wish. So I investigated.”

He looked me up and down. Nothing like how Vala used to look at me. His eyes were beautiful, bright, compassionate, but not infinitely analytical.

Basically, what I’m saying is, he had no idea what I was thinking.

And that felt great.

“Oh!” he said. “Sorry. Um. I’m Nicholas.”

He offered a hand, in those loose, shimmering robes of his. I took it, and shook it. My handshake lingered for a moment, and I got a quizzical look.

The shooting stars tapered off, and then it really was just the two of us, with no special effects.

“Also, sorry for saying I wasn’t attracted to you. I heard your wish, and I know I’m a boy, and about your age, and very unusual, and all the other unusual boys you’ve met have had the same basic agenda, so I wanted to make it clear that I was different. I didn’t mean it as an insult.”

He paused, collected his thoughts, tapped his foot a couple times.

“I mean, you are very pretty. No offense.”

“Thank you,” I said. “My name’s Denise.”

“Right,” he said. “I know.”

It was beautiful magical destiny. Also it was very awkward.

“So,” I said. “My wish?”

“Right. The boys. You want to know what’s the deal with all the supernatural boys. I, um. I can explain that. But it’s embarrassing.”

I arched an eyebrow.

“Can we sit?” I asked.

We sat.

“It’s embarrassing,” I said, searching his eyes. “For you. So you mean it is artificial. Someone is making me attractive to every magical boy.”

“No!” he said. “It’s not artificial. It’s more, well, hm. I know you’ve noticed. You commented on it with Vala. It’s weird, isn’t it? That you live in a world that seemed normal until you went to college, but now you know there are angels, demons, werewolves, vampires, and a superintelligence?”

“Yes,” I said. “Weird. I thought maybe just college, but sure. Weird.”

“That part is artificial. That there are so many different sorts of supernatural or unusual boy at once. I… I’ve been running tests.”

I blinked twice.

“Holy shit. You’re God?”

“No! No no no. Definitely super extremely no.”

I’d struck a nerve, I guessed.

“Okay. Sorry. Then…”

“I am more like God’s grandson. Or something. It’s complicated to explain, and I think usually explaining it explicitly makes everything worse. I’m… in training. Someday I might be responsible for making everything real, if or when the person in charge of reality can’t do it anymore. Making worlds. Holding stories together. Keeping things fulfilling and interesting. It is… very hard work.”

God, those eyes. I know, I know you don’t want to hear about it, but just… let me, okay? Those eyes. You can’t even imagine.

“So you’re in school,” I said. “Like me.”

“Yes. I’m in school. For making worlds be real. And some of that involves trying things out. Like making a world with as many highly compressed supernatural boys as possible, and seeing how they develop.”

“Sure. Cool. But where do I fit in?”

“Well. That’s the thing. Highly compressed supernatural boys, like vampires, werewolves, what have you. To get them started, it usually helps for each of them to have a remarkable human being to fixate on.”

He paused.

“Sorry,” he said. “I, um, oh geez. This is. This is extremely embarrassing.”

I cocked my head. I rested my hand on his hand.

“Nicholas,” I said. “Nick. You’re doing great.”

“Thanks. I’m trying to be delicate, and not say what I’m definitely not saying. Which is that you’re just a love interest. Because you’re not! And also is that you’re a mistake. Which you’re also not! You’re wonderful, Denise. But also, I’m very new at this. And I accidentally forgot to check, when I made all these supernatural entities with a love interest attribute, that the love interest attributes didn’t all point to the same person.”

A long pause. I searched his eyes. He searched mine. Compassionate, probing, but also, just a little bit, wincing.

I laughed. A long, long belly laugh. I laughed and laughed, confident that Vala couldn’t hear me, that wherever I was with Nicholas, the world was far away.

“You’re not mad?” he asked. “That I accidentally made you the antecedent to the romantic feelings of everyone supernatural in my supernatural collision experiment?”

“No, Nicholas. Shocked, maybe. I’m not sure how this is going to sink in. But I’m not mad. Honestly, for the most part, it’s been great.”

Nicholas took a long sigh of relief.

I noticed my hand was still on his, but that he wasn’t really reacting to that, so I took it away. Which he didn’t react to either. That felt weird.

“Can I tell you something a bit private?” he asked.

“Anything,” I answered, too quickly.

“I don’t want to say I created you. That’s not right. More that I clarified a bunch of latent creative energy, and am trying my very best to make it a coherent, compassionate place that’s good. But whatever the proper name is for the sort of relationship I have to the people in this world, this is my first conversation with someone like you.”

“Someone you creat– oops, uh, clarified?”

“To this extent, yes,” he said. “I’ve helped shore up the reality on plenty of things before. But your reality is my first experiment on this scale.”

“Wow,” I said. “Really. Wow.”

“I’m not a mind reader,” said Nicholas. “But I have a guess to what you might be thinking.”

I leaned forward over my crossed legs, and waited for him to say it.

“What you asked Vala, right? To fix the world, and all its suffering.”

That hadn’t occurred to me yet. I’m sure it would have! But it hadn’t quite yet. Still, I nodded.

“Can you?” I asked.

Sadly, he shook his head.

“I wish I could, but…” He gestured to the empty sky. “No shooting stars left. It’s not meant to be. I’m very new at this. Your pocket of the world is very nice. The things it focuses on. You. Your relationships. That’s mostly what I’m clarifying. Your broader world is more a template. Gestural. Implied. From your perspective it’s real. From mine it’s not much of anything at all. Even Vala’s not real to me, really, except for the part of him that talks to you.”

“I don’t think I get it,” I said. “But I trust that you’d help if you could.”

“I don’t think I get it, either,” said Nicholas. “But it’s making me sad. Let’s talk about something else.”

We stood up again. In unison. We were really on the same wavelength, there.

“Denise,” he said. “I have a proposal.”

I nodded.

“I’d love to hear it, Nicholas.”

The not-quite-but-sort-of-God cleared his throat.

“I have one friend doing this with me. She helps keep me grounded. She’s very special to me. My closest friend. We go on adventures together. So I don’t have to always worry about running things. I can experience the world, too, and be young, and grow as a person rather than only as a creator.”

“That sounds nice,” I said.

“Yes. It’s very nice. Challenging, often, but nice. We don’t spend too long in any one world. We go from place to place, time to time. But she’s my only friend right now. Our roving zone feels very small. I think sometimes I could use more company.”

I got chills. Real chills. Because I knew where this was going.

“Right now, Denise, we’re outside the world. Nothing’s true about you except for what I’ve clarified. You don’t have birth parents right now, for example. Your life may as well have started at college. And that’s not fair. That’s not a fair thing to do to a person. So I’m going to send you back to your reality, where you can have a whole, normal life.”

Uh oh. Maybe I didn’t know where this was going. I felt a different kind of chills.

“And I was the same. I said I was like God’s grandson. Well, I was adopted. I didn’t really come from anywhere, but I was taken in by wonderful people, and raised really well, and now I can give back by maybe, someday, inheriting all this.”

He gestured out into the starless, beautiful everything.

“So what I’m saying is, I’m going to send you back. I’m going to let you spend another month in your world, only remembering our conversation like a dream. I’m going to let you enjoy all your hilariously metaphysically incompatible boyfriends, and the great relationships you’ve built with them. I want it clear in your mind, that life you’ve built.”

I nodded. I felt sad. Grateful. Really, really grateful. But also sad.

“And after that month, when it’s clear in your mind, I’ll take you back here. And there will be a door. Two doors. Two doors I’ll build for you. One leading back to the life you’re leading. Soon that life won’t be connected so much to what I clarify. It will slip away from what I have access to. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe you’ll still be able to live a full life, even if it’s not in my domain. I hope so. But whatever sort of life you get to live, it will be yours, and one you built, and very nice.”

“And the other door?”

He smiled. Now he offered his hand again, took mine, gave it a little squeeze.

“That one,” he said. “That one comes to my zone. The zone I share with my friend. You can travel with me sometimes, Denise, if you’d like. Meet my best friend in the world and be part of whatever this beautiful nonsense is I’m trying to do.”

It started to fade away. Like a dream, just as he’d promised.

The last month was really great. It was. But now I’m back here. I’m back on this hill, alone this time, with a door in front of me, and a door behind. One leading back to infinite, magical boyfriends.

And one, the one I think I’ll take, leading to the friend zone.

Tagged: Eliezer YudkowskyPolyamoryTropesRatfic