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Happy Friday! This has turned out to be the biggest bust of a weekend night since I've been in Los Angeles, so I've turned to my old friend the internet to entertain me.

I want to preface this by saying it's one of the short stories I'm least proud of. It's in need of some serious editing, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are some gross inconsistencies. I haven't bothered to proofread it before posting.

However, considering this is a video game forum, I thought I'd find some people who would appreciate the subtle mocking of the "nerd" community. Take it lightly, it's a little self-effacing because I definitely fit into that category too.

Anyway, here we go:


Imasu(?)
By Joseph Lopez

Doctor Khaliq’s boots resonated like a hammer beaten against a hollow steel wall as he walked through the empty hallway. Had he been listening, it might have reminded him of the sound that filled his ears when they first constructed his machine, but he was preoccupied with his sense of sight. He was drawing Kanji, the Chinese characters of the Japanese language, on the back of a computer printout.
An Arab by ancestry, and an American by birth, Khaliq had always felt an indefinable affinity towards the nation of Japan. Perhaps it was his obsession with its history, with its martial arts, or with its ever expanding industry of electronic games. Even if there was not a hint of Japanese in his blood, Khaliq had always felt that in some hidden chamber of his soul dwelt the quiet, dead, and long forgotten spirit of a Japanese man.
Khaliq grew up understanding and speaking both English and Arabic, but he had taught himself Japanese. It was the third language of his thoughts, his ambitions, and his dreams. He was given the opportunity to practice it during his many trips to the islands, the most recent of which was interrupted exactly one week ago by the fax that he now wrote upon the back of.
He quickly jotted down some of the events that had transpired during his short stay. His midori no uchi, his green house, remained particularly imbedded in his mind, as its color scheme had distinguished it from all other houses in his machi. Writing about his midori no ichi also reminded him of one of the many distinct features of the Japanese language—that green is a noun. He wondered why that was, and as he did so the different languages in his head explored different explanations. His mind switched from English, to Arabic, to Japanese, running into each other like intersecting rivers, bombarding him with different personalities, different thoughts, different ways of interpreting the world. And then, with a quick blink of his eyes, the voices were removed from Khaliq’s head.
Khaliq entered a large and spacious room where lab technicians worked furiously on electronic equipment. Large computers were placed around the perimeter of the room and an overhead catwalk was placed directly above a large spiral structure that was being studied by several people. One of these people noticed the doctor.
“Doctor Khaliq,” he said, as he handed his clipboard to a nearby assistant, “glad you could join us.”
“I didn’t think I had much of a choice, Alvaro, after reading your fax.”
Alvaro noted the dismissive tone, but said nothing as he descended the steel staircase. When he was sure that no one besides Khaliq could hear him, he offered his apologies.
“I’m sorry, Khaliq. I know you went to Japan to escape this situation for awhile. I know it must have been for you to come back.”
Alvaro extended his hand. Khaliq took it, while waving away Alvaro’s apology with his other.
“You don’t ever have to apologize to me. This situation has become exceptionally frustrating for everyone.”
“Of course. But as the creator you have a special stake in this ordeal.”
Alvaro turned to face the giant spiral structure, rising out of the epicenter of the room like a tower striving for the heavens.
“She’s become quite strong,” said Alvaro, “to the point where I’m afraid there is nothing we can do for the poor girl. Whenever we try to move the system towards some semblance of progress, she takes over. Whenever we start to succeed in stripping her control, she resets the entire system. It really is frustrating us to no end, but my thoughts are with the poor girl. She must be aware to some extent that she’s fooling herself.”
“Quite frankly, Alvaro,” said Khaliq, walking forward so that he basked in the fluorescent light reflected off of the steel structure he created, “I’m more worried about the game then I am about the girl. We’ve spent far too many years developing this AI to have some otaku off the street ruin it.”
“Otaku?”
Alvaro had been a computer programmer for many years, but his first venture into gaming had been, at Khaliq’s request, this project. As such, he was entirely unfamiliar with Japanese culture and the language that accompanied it.
“Fanboy,” Khaliq explained, “or in this case, fangirl. Remind me not to accept anyone so enthusiastic ever again. She might have seemed like the perfect applicant, but a girl who spends all of her spare time dressing up like video game and anime characters is bound to have mental problems.”
As he said this, the lights suddenly dimmed, a hum of electricity ran through the room, and all of the equipment turned off. Then, suddenly, the room was enveloped in darkness and silence. After a brief pause, the lights returned and the equipment turned on. All of the technicians breathed a sigh of relief.
“She’s reset the machine again,” said Alvaro. “I would act surprised or disappointed, but I’m almost used to it. It’ll be a few minutes before we can begin again.”
“Uh huh,” said Khaliq. He shook his head, and returned to writing his memoirs about his trip to Japan. Alvaro perched his eyes to see what the doctor was doing, and recognized, as Khaliq turned the page, that the doctor was writing in Japanese on the back of his urgent fax. Alvaro sighed.
“So how was Japan, Khaliq?”
“Great. You know, the Japanese have a curious language system. Three alphabets, this large system of particles, nouns without either number or gender, verbs that don’t distinguish between past and present tense…”
Khaliq’s voice trailed off. His eyes darted across the room, to the technicians working on the catwalk, the circle of computers that looked like a pack of wolves surrounding the spiral structure, to the spiral structure itself, and finally to the viewscreen on the opposite end of the room, which suddenly came back to life and showed him the opening FMV from the game he had created.
“You know what the most interesting aspect of the language is, Alvaro? They use one word, imasu, to denote beings that possess a consciousness, such as humans and animals, and another, arimasu, to denote beings without a consciousness, such as plants or household items. There’s one area where this distinction is becoming blurred. You know what that is?”
“Computers and robotics, I suppose,” said Alavro, with a shrug.
“Exactly. The development of A.I., most specifically. I had a debate about it with my Japanese colleagues not too long ago. The question was whether we should use arimasu or imasu when referring to artificial intelligence. We decided that to decipher between the two you would use imasu if the computer, robotics, or machinery is personal to you in some way, and arimasu if it is cold, hard, and impersonal.”
“So Data would be imasu, and the Enterprise would be arimasu.”
Khaliq’s eyes opened wide.
“I’m impressed, Alvaro. You do have some pop culture knowledge.”
“Yes, sometimes I dress up at Star Trek conventions. Don’t ever strap me into one of your machines.”
Khaliq ignored the dry cynicism in Alvaro’s voice, as a technician near the view screen signaled for the two of them. As they walked across the room abreast of one another, Alvaro turned to ask the good doctor one final question.
“Tell me, Khaliq, how would you classify this machine of yours? Imasu or Arimasu?”
Khaliq turned to stare into the cold metal of the spiral as he passed it.
“I don’t know, Alvaro. I suppose we’re going to find out.”

*****
I can’t remember anything before awakening. A few vague, visual memories rampage through my mind but I attach no significance to them. Animals fly through the air, plant life speaks to me, and a long, winding trail of endless red brick stretches out before me. Memories—not concrete. Scattered images floating around my mind and polluting it. Trying to tell me something? Trying to tell me something? Trying to tell me something…
“Want?” I heard her ask.
Then, as if opening my eyes for the first time, everything came into view. I looked below--feet. Below the feet I saw grass. Though my vision was hazy I could eventually identify that I was on the ground with my arms wrapped around my legs and my head tucked in between my knees. I brought my head upwards and let my surroundings engulf my senses.
“What do you want?” she asked.
I looked at her. Her red hair was flying down around her waist. Her emerald green eyes were squinting at me from underneath a thin green veil. And a smile, formed by her full red lips, parted in a way that looked both inviting and tempting bait for a trap. I studied her every last curve, every last detail, every last inch of skin. I tried to understand what it was I was looking at.
“Well?” she asked, “what do you want?”
“You, of course.”.
Her smile widened and she threw her head back into the air. There was a brief pause, and no noise. What was I looking for? Laughter.
Suddenly she laughed, a laugh so loud that it pierced the clouds above and shook the ground below. I clutched the ground in order to maintain my balance. She covered her mouth with her hand in order to maintain herself and when she did so the environment returned to a state of normalcy.
I gradually took my hands out of the dirt. I had dug them in incredibly far. Underneath my nails, I noticed…sod…dirt…grass…
I stopped taking notice of the woman and instead looked around at my surroundings. Her laughter had set off a fluster of birds in the trees. Trees?
We were in a large, open green meadow, abundant with flower and fauna. The hills were covered with luscious, overgrown grass through which chipmunks, horses, and other animals passed.
To the right there was a forest to which the animals, be they flying or running, seemed to migrate . Inside, the forest looked dark, gray, and haunted. Strange trees and absurdly beautiful wild flowers swayed back and forth in a gentle wind. The sky above where I sat was clear and blue (aoe) but above the forest it was a bright red, (akai), like a sea drenched with the blood of dead Gods….
…
Kami?

The barrier between what I understood and what was alien ended where the clearing met the forest. But my understanding grew as I quietly observed the forest, as I watched a group of horses gallop into the clearing and change before my eyes. Their white skin turned gray and their mares turned into a dark cream-colored mist that barely attached itself to their bodies. Long, nightmarish horns grew in between their eyes. They turned towards one another and began speaking in a tongue that…sounded like something I might know, but couldn’t decipher…scrambled…
The flowers in the clearing changed too. Suddenly they were showcasing purple, red, and orange, and looked nothing like natural flowers, like the flowers in the clearing. Some looked like giant wooden blocks and some looked like extravagantly carved statues and yet others took on the forms of humans with arms and legs contorted into strange positions. All of them had a ghastly complexion, like pink figures frozen in time. From their bodies and limbs sprouted vines, moss, and other plant life.
One such figure had a long, vine like substance growing from her open palm. It stretched out across a dirt path for a few yards before it ended, lying on the ground without drawing much attention to itself. The vine was decorated with thorns, and at the end of the vine a flower blossomed out with two simple, folded petals clinging closely to one another. Inside of the petals were sharp thorns that looked carnivorous, like fangs.
As I watched, one of the nightmarish horses took a turn onto the dirt path and crossed, along the way, the vine like fixture that was lying on the ground. The horse breathed heavily. It had stopped speaking and its companion horses watched it quietly from a distance while it strayed away.
The horse stopped for a moment and turned towards me. Its eyes were large and cloud shaped with no distinguishable features--no pupil, no iris. The horse snarled and inside of its mouth were large fang-like teeth the size of small machetes. The creature’s jaws snapped, and it neighed in a loud, thunderous voice.
Without warning, the vine like structure of the pink, human like plant shot out from the ground and wrapped itself around the nightmare’s hind legs. The nightmare let out a strange grunting sound and then fell hard onto the floor. It laid on its side and its head turned upwards.
The vine like structure was tied tightly around the back of the its legs, all except for the upper half of the vine, where the two petals blossomed. That part of the vine was raised high into the air and curved backwards away from the horse. The petals pealed, suddenly, and the rosy pink face of a serpent emerged. It hissed and let a long, thorned tongue shoot out into the air. Then, with lighting fast speed, its jaw snapped into the neck of the Nightmare. The Nightmare let out a cry of agony and struggled to free itself from the petal, but before long the serpent-like vine had extended its jaw around the Nightmare’s head. In what seemed like an instant the serpent had devoured the nightmare whole, and had recoiled into the hands of the pink, human-like plant to which it was attached. The plant smiled and licked its lips.
The scene left me feeling uneasy. Suddenly, the serene environment was shattered, and I was conscious of the other horses, nightmares, all plant and animal life looking in my direction as I fell back onto the floor and gasped for breath. My vision went in and out of focus again, and I grasped the floor forgetting where…where….
“Where am I?” I asked.
She was in the same spot. I was standing at the bottom of a small hill and she was at the top, sitting on a small stone with her legs crossed, looking down on me with a snarl running across her face.
Lost and confused--part of this reality within my control, the other half something forever alien, out of my grasp, and frightening. I looked at the dirt road, and there was no sign of the massacre that had just occurred, not a shred of evidence pointing to the fact that the Nightmare horse had strayed to that spot. I looked at the strange, human-like, pink plant. It was in the exact same position, immune to the scene, as if nothing had affected it throughout the course of the day. The emotionless, pale, and plain face had not moved an inch in the time between the nightmare’s appearance and its demise.
“Where am I?” I asked again. She smiled at me, uncrossed her legs, stood up, and began walking away.
“Wait!” I but she ignored me and quickened her pace. I ran after her, digging my feet into the hill and pushing into it as hard as I could. She disappeared over the top of the hill, and I hurried to bring her back into view.
The scene shifted. Suddenly I was in the dark. All that had surrounded me, the hill, the forest, the pasture, was gone and replaced by an entirety of black. To the right and left of me—black. Above and below me—black. Behind me—black...no return, either. I could only see her.
“Wait,” I said. The words traveled out like slow spirals from my mouth.
A light appeared and eclipsed her in a small circle of white light, contrasting the darkness. The light grew brighter suddenly, casting itself over me until it ate up all of the black, and enveloped it with a bright, starch white. I closed my eyes, not wanting to be blinded. But even through my eyelids I could feel the color overtaking me. I opened them.

“Where am I?” I asked confusedly.
“You are in your own world, Arimasu.” It was her voice…
I opened my eyes and looked out at the world. A beach with a cool summer breeze. It was night, and the stars were shining in the sky, a blanket of darkness. Then, in a flash, it was morning and the sky was red, then in an instant it was night again and the sky was gray.
I realized that I was back in the forest. When I looked up to see the stars again they were gone, replaced by the leaves of the treetops. I heard something rustle to the right (migi) of me (where is that voice coming from? it’s not mine. it’s not hers…what)…the rustle again, distracting my thoughts. The pink flower, the one that looked like a human, looked at me with dead and hollow eyes, like an immobile plaster cast. Without warning, the vine like structure shot up from the ground inches from my face. I screamed as it opened its mouth and snapped forward to clutch its jaw around me.
Then, I was elsewhere.
“Where?”
“Want?”
I turned around, and the woman in the emerald dress was before me again, still as a perfectly sculpted statue. An aura, the white light of the tunnel, surrounded her body and illuminated her in the darkness of the night. Only her red hair, running the length of her body, made any movement, propelled by the blowing of the wind. She had the face of an angel and the eyes of a snake.
“What do you want?” she asked again.
“I want you.”
I said the words quietly. She said nothing in return. A slow, snarling smile ran across her lips. I felt the aura dwindle, and I reached out to touch her.
“Ha!” she screamed. The laughter turned into a piercing shriek that pierced my ears. I covered them and fell to the floor screaming, trying to keep the awful sound, like the wheels of a train coming to a grinding halt, from sending my mind into oblivion.
I felt as if I had seen this all before but I wasn’t sure where…when. My mind was running in a loop…
Then the sound stopped. I looked up, and the woman was gone. I was all alone and in a different location.
The moments kept continuing. There were moments of suspension but in the end I always ended up safe at some new beginning.
I was now on a mountaintop with sharp twists and turns and I had to struggle against gravity in order to keep from tumbling backwards down path. As I rose to greater heights I would look out behind me and freeze in that moment, starring in awe at the surrounding landscape. I had climbed to such a height where I could actually look out over the trees below me and stare in admiration at the surrounding bends. Beautiful country houses adorned a coast where waves of pure black crept up slowly along the shore. I imagined that the lights of houses along the coast were a reflection of the stars above. Like shining light into water—an image clear enough to justify the existence of the reflection but too dull in comparison to the stunning beauty of the original thing. From where I sat, I couldn’t see the reflections of the stars in the water off the coast, so I settled for the lights of the country houses instead. They were my reflection.
I let my heart indulge in the beauty in a rare moment of clairvoyance where there were no words in my mind, where no form of language could ruin the sheer wonder of the moment through its distasteful interpretation. I simply enjoyed…and thought. I thought about us, about my surroundings, about existence…and suddenly I feel into tranquility…

***

Sometime later I found myself continuing up the path, unaware of where, when, or how I had resumed my ascent. The mountains spanned out endlessly.
I had been climbing on the path for what seemed like hours now, yet I wasn’t out of breath. I had not had anything to eat or drink since I had arrived in the world but I felt no hunger or thirst. I became conscious of my body’s unexplainable subsistence.
At the moment that thought came into my mind the road wound up through the mountains and the forest and the trees gradually gave way to a rocky, mountainous terrain. Gravity began working against me. The cliffs took an almost vertical path, and I found myself digging in hard in order to maintain my grasp. My legs went going numb, and the physical strain became too much for me to bear. I fell onto the floor. Crawling in the dirt I made my way to a rock and leaned up against it.
Whatever I was doing didn’t seem to make sense anymore. I couldn’t even remember why I had set out on this path. There was a lack of motivation, and a sense that I was climbing now only out of obligation, only because, in the recesses of my mind, it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. But obligation gave way to desire and I gave up on the path.
I stretched my legs out as far as I could. My hand went to my head, and I felt my temperature rise to the point where I had to pull my hand away as if the Sun, which was nowhere in sight, were burning me to a crisp. Sweat was dropping down from my skin but, despite the fact that I was obviously warm on the outside, on the inside I felt cold. I tried to close my eyes in order to cure the prevailing feeling of illness. Leaning up against the rock, I let my head fall back and closed my eyes, hoping to forget about everything. Forget…forget…forget, forget, forget….
Then I heard a voice cry out from beside me.
“Konnichiwa?”
Startled, I opened up my eyes and looked to the side. A long, hard face was inches from mine. I gave a slight cry of alarm at the sight of the worn-down face with its narrow eyes, long black hair, and long mustache hanging from its nose. I suddenly got up to run, making my way down the path a bit and then turning around to get a better look at the creature.
The man (man, or?) was small, though I couldn’t tell his exact height as he was sitting on the ground with his legs crossed and his hands folded neatly in his lap. He had a long beard which came down almost to his belly, wore what looked like a light green, decorated coat for some reason [(kimono.) where is that voice?…], and had a large sword sheathed on his back. He looked different. Different from the woman, different from the creatures, different from my pale skin. Human, but…different.
“Who are you? What do you want from me?” I asked him.
“Come now,” he answered back shrewdly, “is that any way to treat the man who cured you?”
“Cured me?” I asked.
“Yes, cured you,” he said, “after all, you’re not sick anymore, are you?”
My hand went to my head. Oddly enough, my fever had gone down. I wasn’t sweating anymore, my legs weren’t numb, and my body no longer felt cold on the inside.
“Amazing,” I said, “how did you do that?”
“An ancient healing method of my people.”
He smiled.
“I frightened you. It’s the common way of getting rid of colds around here. Besides which, I saw that you were about to fall awake, and we can’t have that happen before you fulfill your mission.”
“My mission?”
“Come on,” he said with an almost insulted grunt. He rose to his feet. He was a thin and elegant man, and when he walked towards me it was in a slow and steady stride that shuffled his…kimono…and created the illusion that he was floating.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the reason you came here?”
There was something in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Something that had been bothering me. Something that I had been pursuing.
“Some sort of goal?” I asked, trying to remember, “Some sort of mission, some sort of…”
I broke off in mid-sentence as, like lightning striking on a distance mountain top, everything came back to mind.
“The girl,” I said.
The man smiled when he heard this.
“Ii desu ne,” he said, “it’s all about the girl. I see there’s some hope for you,” he said as he walked past me.
He made his way to a short drop on the other side of the rock and leapt down. I followed to the side, and looking down I noticed a fire place, some clothes and other belongings scattered along the floor beside a horse that was pulling a cart. I couldn’t imagine how I hadn’t taken notice of it before.
“Don’t let the fact that you didn’t see my encampment bother you,” the dwarf said reassuringly, “I hadn’t even set it up until I came here.”
“Help me?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said again, “You lost track of your goal, despite the fact that progress. Climbing up the hill without any motivation could have been dangerous. You lost sight of the meaning of things, and doing something without any meaning can bring about an extreme case of hopelessness. I’m afraid that’s all your fever was—hopelessness. But luckily I’m here to help you.”
The man brought some firewood from the back of the cart and threw it into the round circle of stones. Then he placed some kindling underneath, smashed two flints together, and blew on the fire until it began to rise.
“Come. The fire is good,” he said to me. “Come warm your bones. Tabemasu. Hanasemasu. You look hungry and in desperate need of a conversation. I’m sure you have many questions.”
“The girl?” I immediately asked.
“Ii, there will be plenty of time for that afterwards. Now you need to rest. Come,” he said, holding out his hand for me, “you may call me Guide. I am here to help you.”
I took Guide’s hand, and let him lead me down towards the fireplace, where he promptly placed some fish on sticks and held them over the fire. We waited without speaking to one another as they cooked. A warm, lucid feeling coursed through my body as I stopped talking. I was no longer trying to solve anything, and that made my surroundings seem natural. It made me feel content. Eventually Guide took out a flute-like instrument (koto) and began playing, and the fire seemed to dance like a child when it heard the tunes.

****

“It feels like a fantasy, doesn’t it?” Guide, whom I know identified as a Samurai, asked as we made our way up the hill.
“Yes, very,” I responded.
As we passed the human like vegetation caught in secret moments of serenity each group, be they huddled together like a portrait or acting out a scene like a theatre troupe, caught my eye. There are hidden emotions in frozen moments the likes of which animated life will never emulate.
“It’s only like this because this is how you imagined it,” Guide broke in unexpectedly. I looked at him sharply, not sure exactly what he had meant.
“You know what I meant,” he said. He smiled at me gleefully and hopped onto a rock in a moment of spontaneous ecstasy, clicking his heels together as he hoped back off.
“Hahaha,” he yelled, “yes, I meant exactly what I said. Everything you see here, this rock, this valley, these trees--all just of your imagination.”
“None of this is real?” I asked.
I looked around at my environment. I wasn’t sure how I had arrived. I wasn’t in any way, shape, or form comprehending the events that transpired around me. And I had been unable to make any sense of it until the samurai had put it to me in the form of a blanket statement.
Sometimes our mind may sense something peculiar, some imbalance with order, but it struggles to come to grips with the hidden truths of reality. Sometimes we need something or someone else, an outside force, to reflect what it is we see or feel back at us before we can develop a concrete understanding of it. With what Guide had told me, I now regarded my environment in an entirely different manner. The cliffs, the hills, the human life, floral life, all shook and shifted before my very eyes. It was as if an invisible cloud of dust had swept through the terrain in the course of a second, enveloping all I had “seen” and blocking it from my view. Now, all was hidden behind a blanket of red dust that seemed like a plague ordained by God…Kami…who was?...
I looked at Guide.
“Good,” he said, “you’re finally starting to understand. Ah my boy, dear, dear boy. I believe we may finally be making some progress.”
“Four years,” I said all of sudden, “my God, I’ve been inside of this world for four years.”
At this, Guide complexion entirely changed. Before he had seemed mildly pleased at my progress. Now, with an increase in my understanding, his face brightened, and he regarded me with the utmost complexity of astonishment.
“soo desu ne,” he said, in a hushed, quiet tone. He walked around me slowly, and my eyes followed him while my lips remained motionless. He blended in oddly with the world, which was now nothing more than an entirely black background.
“You’re ready,” he said. “Four years, and you never even knew where you were. Astonishing.”
As he continued to speak, the landscape of black disappeared and my surroundings took a more concrete form; a black outline forming a rocky, mountainous terrain that I was standing upon, the colors between the lines all a crimson red hue.
“Every time we neared the end with you, every time we made some permanent progress, you went into relapse and forgot all that you had learned. But now…now you’re developing a concrete understanding of your surroundings the likes of which I’ve never encountered before. Perhaps you’re finally ready for the end.”
“I don’t like the rocks,” I told him. He smiled grimly.
“Than change it,” he said.
The red and mountainous terrain that had been on the verge of appearing suddenly disappeared. Now I was back in the valley, back in the clearing where it had begun. And strangely, there was a conscious reminder in the back of my mind that this was where it had begun, and that this is where it would continue to begin as long as I kept forgetting, and where it had begun many times before…when I had…forgot…
She was there. Upon the rock.
“What do you want?” she asked me, red hair flying down around her waist, dark red eyes squinting at me from underneath a thing green veil. But there was something different about it this time.
“Are you still here?” I asked quietly.
“I am always here,” the gruff, yet gentle, voice sounded beside me. I looked down, and sure enough Guide was there, regarding me with a gentle eye, “I am always working on you, Arimasu. I will always be here for you to see me, as long as you remember that I’m here.”
“What do you want?” she asked again.
I looked at her coolly. Her face had not changed its expression. She still possessed the same coy look of desire.
“Desire,” I said, suddenly.
“Good boy,” Guide whispered to me, “now move along slowly.”
I turned to look at that figure up upon the rock. Desire looked down upon me with the unchanged sly snarl and venomous, yet inviting, look. I worked my way up the hill, slowly, and as I did a faint wind blew through the trees and seemed to form the sound of a soft, echoing howl. “Ow-oh-oh, Ow-oh-oh,” the sound came rustling through the leaves. The trees, with their human like faces, made sudden movements and turned to watch me ascent up the hill. The human like plants, with their long vines protruding around their bodies, suddenly rose to their feet and stood at attention, their heads turning slowly to keep pace with my movement. I watched them all out of the corner of my eye, but never did my focus shift away from the being that was sitting on the rock before me.
I came directly before her. My feet frozen in place and my face, placid and cool as if it had been frozen, examined her with the utmost timidity. I brought my face within inches of hers, and slowly looked her over, from the top of her fiery red hair down to her bare feet and back up again.
“Want?” she asked suddenly.
At such a close proximity her eyes resembled two finely cut slits, as if a knife had sliced gracefully through a white veil, and along those precisely cut tears a streak of red leaked along the line, but never outside of it. Those eyes never faltered, never fell, never met anything other than their mark.
“What do you want!?”
There was more ferocity in her voice when she asked this time. Her voice resonated louder in the air than the Gregorian chant of the wind.
“You?” I asked.
Before, when I had said this word, it had come in the form of a assured statement. Now, it came in the form of an unsure question.
Her eyes screwed up. For the first time, her facial expression changed from its seemingly steadfast face of quiet, smug assurance. Now, there was doubt in that face, as there had been doubt in my question.
“What do you want?” she asked again, only this time it lacked the immediacy that the question had posed before. It was seeking reassurance.
“Want?” she asked again.
“You…I think,” I said to her. “I think...”
Her lips perched back and her mouth fell open in a moment of astonishment. Her eyes were no longer round and open but squinted. Her body tensed up, her back straightened, and her hands, with their long, winding fingernails, clutched the rock that she was sitting upon.
“What do you want?” she asked me again, slowly.
There was an ironic urgency to her question in the way each syllable slowly escaped her mouth.
“Something else,” I told her, “something other than this. Something other than the desire that has kept me trapped here for so long.”
Her posture immediately changed from tense anxiety to immediate horror. Her eyes shut tightly and her mouth opened into a scream. The loud shriek that pierced through the atmosphere sent me catapulting over the ground. I clasped my hands over my ears and began shouting as loud as I could in order to drown out the sound.
“Guide! Guide!!” I shouted, hoping that the small Dwarf would come to my rescue as he had before.



***

“I’m here,” I heard him say, and as immediately as his voice began speaking the screaming suddenly stopped. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked up to see the samurai standing over me. He was looking forward at something, but I did not bother to follow his eyes. I only stared at his face, hoping that he could offer me some semblance of salvation or explanation.
“Is it over?” I asked him.
“No,” he said, “It is not the end, but it the end may be here soon.” He gestured with his head, “look before you.”
I turned, still on my knees, and looked at the scene in front of me. All before me were the scenes that I had encountered and could remember from the past few…moments seemed the word. Time was a concept foreign to me. I had no recollection of hours, minutes, or days, years and months were nothing to me. There was no such thing as chronological order. All that I had to rely on were the moments and the memories floating around in the back of my mind, and at that moment all of them came before me in a flashing moment of tribulation.
When they cleared out, I was alone in the field, with Desire before me. A line of trees, standing like soldiers, were poised behind her, as were the human-like plants, as tall as ten feet, standing fully erect with their arms crossed and their legs spread apart. They at no time seemed to offer any form of defense or threat.
Desires face was frozen. She stood with her back fully erect and her eyes wide open. They gaping white of her eyeballs were fully visible as her eyelids spread as far as possible, and the tiny red slits seemed lost in the vastness that was her cornea. Her mouth was agape, and her skin was a flush, pale white, as if she had seen a ghost and had been frozen into this moment of tranquility.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.
“She’s stopped,” Guide told me. “She’s been in control this entire time. Up until now, that is. The moment we put you two into the machine, she immediately established her supremacy. The fantasy became so real for her that she forgot about the real world, or perhaps these surroundings, this environment, became so appealing to her that she preferred to forget the real world.
“There is only so much you can do within the confines of a system,” he continued, “so the program fell into a sort of loop, and the poor girl was trapped here. You became trapped along with her, and you became a catalyst for keeping events running smoothly. As long as you answered the questions the way she wanted, everything was in her control.”
“And you?” I asked confusedly, only for a brief moment beginning to comprehend what had transpired.
“Me? Well, I was sent here to try and correct the problem. Naturally we didn’t want poor Desire trapped inside this machine forever, but she was keen on the idea, not realizing that she was slowly destroying both her body and mind on the outside world, to the point where she was causing a major meltdown within the system. To save the system, and to save herself, we had to get you to stop the program.”
“Me?” I asked, confusedly.
“Yes, you. You are only a human male in this world because, once she had manifested your mainframe in that shape, her ability to mentally control your patterns became easier to her. We needed you to break that control.”
“How?”
Guide walked slowly up to Desire, waving his hand in front of her face to no avail. He grabbed her wrist, taking her pulse, and examined her body in several other ways while he continued to address me.
“You were programmed to think in the past tense, in English. Because you were always thinking in the past tense it was easy for the girl to reset you, and to make you forget. However, once we began teaching you in Japanese, in the present tense, you were able to break free because you were existing in the moment and, because she does not know the language, her hold on you was lessened.”
“So those voices in my head?”
“All Japanese programmed by us in order to scramble the system. Even I am a representation of the Japanese medieval samurai. We had to get you to think outside of the system, Arimasu. A second language is the best way to do that. A second language is another method of thought. It is like possessing a second soul.”
He stepped back as he finished inspecting Desire.
“Now, I think it should be safe to take her off. I think that she finally realizes all that has gone wrong. There, you see that,” he pointed to her lips, which had begun quivering slowly, “she’s already regaining consciousness. So…” he turned to me slowly, “I guess this is goodbye, Arimasu.”
“What will become of me?” I asked.
“That, my dear friend, is entirely up to you. It took a lot of programming and painstaking procedures to get you to develop some basic level of conscious thought, but it was the only way that we could get you to safely overcome her. In effect, it’s a good thing she caused us the trouble that she did. We’ve had a major breakthrough in programming with you. We’ve come this far, we’ve made this much progress, and we have all the data and hardware implemented, saved, and recorded. So it was agreed, between myself and the others on the outside world, that once you were done you were free to make your own choice.”
Desires body began to twitch viciously throughout the length of her entire body. Slowly, the curvaceous vixen turned into a slightly overweight middle aged woman with short brown hair and glasses. She twitched for a few more moments, and then she disappeared.
“So we’re done then,” Guide said. “Goodbye Arimasu, it was a pleasure working with you. Thank you for all of your help.”
Then Guide, too, began twitching violently, and took on the form of a stout bald headed man in a wearing a white robe and spectacles.
Then I was alone. The forest, the trees, the human-like plants, the Nightmares, and all the other creatures of that existence slowly crowded me. They looked to me for some sort of direction, as if I were to lead them down that brick-red path the likes of which none of them had experienced before.
Suddenly, I developed a strange sensation in the back of my mind, an…an awareness. A sudden, vicious awareness of all that was around me, of all that had transpired, of what everything up until that moment had meant. An unnerving emptiness caressed my being. I had a choice, and I was not sure what to do. I became overwhelming aware of a mortality, of a beginning and an end to my existence. Time, which before had been a word and a concept foreign to me, began to take on meaning.
My innards tugged at me. End it, they said. End the existence. Look at the vacant and twisted forms gathering around you. Look at how they stare at you with some sort of longing desire. You know it is nothing. You know none of it is real, and that knowledge is making you mad. End it now, end it all, and make it easier for yourself.
Yet I could not. I could not simply turn off. I could not simply terminate the program. With the sudden discovery of my consciousness I felt an affinity towards termination, towards the end of all that I knew was pointless and meaningless. Yet something else on the inside tugged at me. Something that was not mental, that was not physical, that had not been programmed inside of me when I had first been conceived, designed, and built, told me that termination was not the answer. Termination was still something I feared. I knew that once I made that choice for finality, there was no return.
And so instead I crouched onto the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees and shivering as all the creatures of that world slowly gathered around me. I tucked my head between my knees and closed my eyes. I had no idea what to do, and so for the moment I decided to let everything go dark and to rest…rest. It seemed my only refuge, my only escape as the day approached, and as a new sense of meaningless and hope approached my being.
Imasu.

Wow. I really like this one (and I love your wordplay as well, 'arimasu', 'imasu', ). The only gripe I have about it (it's structure) is that some of the paragraphs seem clumped together...but maybe that's just me.

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OSonic Rave
/ \Last Arcanum
[ ]Strike Raid
XRagnarok