Overlap: The Other Side

<04/15/149,559 {Avion 148} - 15:02 | Corral Position, Genosis, Altiri Sector Space>

If only I had known what heartbreak would await me this afternoon; if only I had any means to avert the worst moment in my life, I would not be here right now telling such a sad story. I've been so excited about my new friend for such a long time; two years have I known Amelia now.

The scryers did their best to warn me. Some of my own sisters were uncertain of my choice to get involved in this purge. I should have listened to everyone, instead of listening to no one. Yet it seems, the desire to reach out and make a friend - sometimes exceeds priority over those we should trust even more. I never expected to be hurt, or for any of this to fail in my face. It's already too late for me now. Should my name leak out to other Altiri, I would no longer care, for my business of the purge is forever removed.

I only hope to convey a message of warning to other aggressor groups thinking about purging a human. No matter how amazing the person you see appears, they can still fool all of us. Purging is such a risky action to undertake, and all of us should be warned each moment how definite such a sacred art is. If we choose at all, we put ourselves in eternal risk, losing so much in the process to gain something so small. The future never works out the way we think it will, and so, as I reflect on all that happened this morning, I plead to others like me not to make the same mistakes.

"Hey Amelia! What's going on?" Despite the semi-moderate strength of our connection, my telepathic voice reached her so loudly, enveloping my brightest side of her presence, my best friend. No matter how routine our link has become, each moment I hear her voice is such ascension and energy stimulating my heart.

"Hey Leibra," Amelia replied with a fraction the enthusiasm as I had. I knew not to react too soon to some of her occasional mood swings, since they are so common in high-schoolers.

No matter what gets underneath her skin, I'll always be here to help her through, as I have been for the past few years. Nobody knows what special friendship lives between us; I, a member of The Unity, and Amelia, the young woman I've purged not too long ago.

The waiting period for the purge completion process was hell in my heart, but after waiting long enough, I finally got to speak to her, just as the scryers promised I could. There could only be one purpose, building the bonds we have between each other now. Amelia wanted love, and she only received bullies. Amelia wanted wishes, though life only delivered her evil, some in her home life and some in her school life. One day I noticed her, saw the beautiful soul suffering before me, drowning in agony for too long, and so I got my group together and purged her.

Though I made it sound so simple and easy, no moment of our paths crossing was ever easy for us. I had to question my own sanity a dozen times, as did my sisters for making such a risky decision. However, my own selfless care for the people I met around me played louder tunes than fear; hope given a kind of power it should not deserve to have. My actions changed Amelia's life forever, an action neither of us could ever undo, so I focused only on bettering each other.

From that moment on, I spent years helping her, and she spent years getting to know us better. I helped her with every little social interaction I could think of, building her a bridge to the top where Amelia would stay happy. Little by little, Amelia gained more human friends around her, more trust, more popularity, everything we both wanted for her, and she kept what we had a secret, swearing to never reveal me to the others.

"So did you manage to get out of your last class like always?" Sometimes this human would skip some of her classes, though other times she would simply glaze ahead of her work before leaving in grace. She was standing outside alone with me now, far towards the front sign away from the entrance of the school, back to the fence as usual.

"I'm just glad it's cold enough outside for this today... Leibra? We have to talk."

"... Sure." I would have it no other way, having Amelia trust me so much that she could speak about something so heavy. I could tell already that whatever was eating her was heavier in weight than what I was used to seeing. She's done so well on her own for the past year; Amelia is her own self-confident person, who didn't need my advice anymore to dominate every aspect of her life. That's more proof that she's as capable as I've hoped. So, I'll help her with anything at all.

Amelia paused before she proceeded, trying to keep herself calm with a deep breath and her face aimed up at the bright sky. "I can't thank you enough for how much you helped me over the years. Without you, I wouldn't be half the person I am today."

"You don't have to be so modest about it. I did all of this to help you, because I wanted to." Some seconds passed before I felt any answer within Amelia, and it finally was starting to put me on edge.

"I just want you to know that I appreciate everything you've done for me... In only a few days from now, I'm going to graduate from high school and start a life of my own. I've got so many new friends to talk to as well whenever I want."

What a relief; that's all she's fazed about. In fairness, human life is difficult enough to get bent out of shape over things, as I have seen my fair share of injustice on ACS414. "But I have faith in you. I know you'll be able to live a wonderful life if you just keep giving it your all."

"A wonderful life," Amelia repeated, "and a normal life too."

"Eh?" What is this feeling within her? I've never sensed it before, nor do I understand the paradoxical solace in her voice.

"For most of high school, I needed you Leibra... But now, now that everything is as it should be, there isn't really a need for you and me to hang out anymore."

"..." Whatever thoughts and words I wanted to have dissolved, my wincing and shock too strong to remember what was just said. I must not have heard her right. There's no way she would say something like that. "I don't... I—"

"It isn't your fault Leibra. I just... I just want to live the life I was meant to, you know? I want to have normal experiences with normal guys, normal thoughts as well."

"But— but you can have all of that! You don't have to stop being with me to get there!" What are either of us saying? Is Amelia confused? Did I hit my head to drift into some kind of false consciousness?

"We both know none of that is true. I'm tired of sneaking around in the cold just to say something with telepathy, and I still have a hard time forgetting about all those intrusive thoughts you threw into me. It took me so long just to get rid of that never-ending montrum about the Altiri."

"I— I— I don't understand! What did I do wrong? Whatever you're mad about I can fix it, promise!" Just listening to myself felt pathetic, but the things coming from Amelia's mouth were totally uncalled for. Why would she suddenly want nothing to do with me anymore? This isn't the best friend I've known all these years, is it?

"You didn't do anything wrong Leibra. It's just that, I've grown up now. All of this insanity about other worlds and psionic ascension, it isn't something I wanted to stay hinged on forever."

"So that's it? You don't need me anymore? I thought we were friends Amelia! Does this have to do with what we talked about before? We already proved to you that we really do exist. I'm not some imaginary friend you've made up; I'm made out of flesh and bone just like you!"

"I said this isn't about you alright!" With both of us annoyed and upset beyond rational thought, Amelia made her motives perfectly clear, while I could only stand and wallow. "I know already that you aren't imaginary. But to everybody else, you and the Altiri might as well be. It's a secret I'm supposed to keep just to prove my sanity to others, and I don't want to keep those secrets anymore."

"So tell them!"

"I won't," she returned sternly. "We both know how that will turn out. It's better if I just keep things the way they are supposed to be."

"What you're proposing makes no sense. You can easily hide my presence, and call me back whenever you want every so often."

"That isn't entirely accurate either." Her words puzzled me enough that I had to hear her out. "I mean yeah, I could let you go and call you back every so often, but it's still too often for my life to have the balance I want. No normal girl talks to aliens from the depths of space... Nine months or so; that is the length of time I'd have to avoid contacting you, in order for this telepathic power in me to wither away forever, isn't it?"

"What are you thinking Amelia? After everything we went through, after all that time we spent together!" The entire world might as well have been flipped upside down, and all I could see before was washed into the wavy mess of tears.

"Don't make this harder than it needs to be. I had some fun while it lasted too, but I never asked you to become so strongly attached to me like this. I never asked you once to purge me."

"You just told me how grateful you were that I helped you."

"I am Leibra! You helped me a great amount, and I'll always be thankful for that... But I never asked you to stay with me for all of my entire life."

"You understand I can't just purge another, right? The one and only purge I ever get in an entire life time only belongs to you."

"I thought you purged me to help me. Well, you accomplished that task."

"I purged you because I wanted to have another friend as well, someone I thought I could trust with something so important to both of us!"

Amelia nodded, further breaking what was left of my heart. "I just wanted you to help me... Hanging out with you was fun and interesting, but it was never something I could let go on forever. I have human friends now, people I can physically be with, and a life so close ahead of me. I can't keep all of that if I'm also spending so much of my mind in Genosis."

"I've had my mind in your world as well as my own for much longer, and what you claim to be impossible is actually really easy... I don't understand you."

"Do you remember what you told me on the very first day we met?"

I didn't reply, only because I was too sick to think anymore. Everything just felt so unreal now, like a bad dream I needed to wake up from.

"You told me, that no matter what I think, whether I decide to call you again and hang out with you was a choice entirely up to me, and a choice I would hang onto for as long as I live."

"So you were just using me until you got what you wanted."

"I'm sorry you see it that way Leibra. I can't live in two worlds like you think I can, and I'm never going to make any progress if I don't go off on my own... If that nine month rule did not exist, I would call you every year regardless to check in... But telepathy just isn't a power I want anymore."

Is she the most irrational human I've ever known? Maybe I'm the most irrational Altiri any will ever see. Sharp and broken as her words were, Amelia's choice is what killed me inside. All aggressor groups know what kind of choice this is; this is what humans do to us when they reject our intervention with their lives.

In all technicality, any purged human has a right to tell their own story, and they also have a right to turn us down when they realize who we are... But Amelia never did that, not in the beginning. Why would she wait to tell me this? Why do this after all the adventures we had together? No matter what she says, I can't make any sense of it at all, and so, I couldn't speak, couldn't think, and couldn't react.

"I'm sorry Leibra. That's about the whole of it... We might have become friends, but we can't remain that way. You belong with your people in your world, and I belong here with my people."

"I... I don't know what to say." Though I didn't lose too many tears so quickly, my voice was already depleted of all energy, of any purpose and sustenance.

"I'm glad you showed up in my life when you did... But this is goodbye now."

Her message took longer than it should have to register with me, as I jumped understanding what she was about to do. "Amelia don't! Amelia!" Reaching out as if I could somehow stop her, the sudden whooshing sensation of the disconnect filled me in silence, the moment after paralyzing all of time itself.

Even though my sisters could sense my total distress, I erased their presence from my consciousness, leaving myself alone to rot with the impossibility before me. What shouldn't be possible just became possible; the definition of a miracle flipped on its other side, tragedy to drain the life force from my soul. By the time minutes went by, I finally realized that Amelia was leaving me forever, intending to reject all communication until her psionic core atrophies, removing the telepathy we gave her.

I usually have background thoughts and feelings, but this removed everything from within, ceasing the flow of everything everywhere, until I couldn't remember where I was or what anything meant anymore. The worst thoughts and feelings in all my life came to hammer away at what was left after long enough, fragmenting me after I had so long loved and trusted someone enough to do anything for them. There wasn't anything in any world capable of curing this.

<08/27/149,560 {Avion 148} - 19:21 | Research Station NC-3, Genosis, Altiri Sector Space>

Chapter Theme Shift: Soul Dreamer ~ Unusual Cosmic Process (Depths of Consciousness)

"That's enough Lovithica! I don't want to see any more of that!" I begged the scryer to cease her psionic transmission into me, too upset and full of tears to keep my usual composure. Lovithica did stop using memory transfer when I showed her I was beyond my own limits. It was the story Sherika, Derria, Ashiela, and I came here to investigate, but like last time, we got way more than we bargained for.

All of what happened just now, occurred a little more than a year ago in 2003, and it was as if I were Leibra for the entire duration of the immersive experience. Unlike before, in which we used a specially made report to learn what happened to Mylla, Altiri Scryer Lovithica was given a full memory transfer by the Royal Scryers with special permission.

Being trapped inside of someone else's memory like that was such a crazy experience, but I felt pain stronger than anything I've ever felt in all my life. I can't believe an Altiri aggressor group leader would trust a human to such an incredible degree, and I also can't believe that same human would stab her in the back this way. Yet everything I felt and saw through Leibra was entirely accurate, a memory transferred directly from the same woman herself. The only fake entity about this memory are both their names, altered as redactions for our purpose.

I wasn't the only one balling; my other sisters were in tears too, sympathetic to that psychological torture we were just put through. Ashiela was vocalizing her turmoil the most. "I don't understand why Amelia would do something like that!"

"Neither do the rest of us," Lovithica replied calmly. She felt the same as us, though her intensity of the peril was drained by how many times she has already done this for other aggressor groups as well. "Amelia, or as some will call her, experiment number 16, baffled even the Royal Scryers when Leibra broke the bad news to them at the temple. The only reason we are allowed to be cognizant to any of this private knowledge, is because Leibra no longer cares about the secrecy of it. She's still broken, still upset beyond measure. She's still in recovery while one of her sisters takes over command of the aggressor group."

I fought so hard to speak through the lingering sadness echoing throughout my heart. We Altiri don't dream, but memory sharing is one close form of dreaming, though it feels too real for comfort. "Why would the Royal Scryers break so much of their own protocol for this one instance?"

"Because," Lovithica answered tilting her head slightly, "they feel that a particular lesson about this case must be learned as soon as possible."

"And what kind of lesson is that?!" Ashiela stomped defiantly. "Don't trust those savage humans?!" Clearly she felt more betrayed than I did, my hope still a survivor of this battle.

Lovithica held her eye brow, letting the air sink in a little longer. "Even if an aggressor group currently has zero interest in purging another human, all who have authorization and ability to purge should understand every consequence and risk of such a method. I know Amelia's actions in particular don't make a lot of sense to us, but it does highlight a known possibility we've known about for a long time, played out in the worst way for the first time; voluntary rejection."

It was a phrase that meant more than the weight she put into it. The purge has many phases that it must pass, or else fail and leave the human target unable to connect to the Altiri host. However, just because a purge cycle completes does not mean that everything was a success in the end, as demonstrated with Experiment #13 and Aldriah. The first difficulty that comes after a purge completes is convincing the target that everything they experience is real along with our presence. However, this is both connected yet isolated from the additional choice to embrace what is known. A human who is purged is connected to the Altiri node automatically, but must also manually connect again after the first connection fails; which implies a choice they must make alone. Humans may in theory, understand and even believe that we exist, yet still choose to reject giving the node another connection after the first. In our terms, this choice - when made is known as voluntary rejection, and while it instigates that the purge itself was successful, the intention of the purge is not.

"This Amelia girl doesn't make much sense to me. I can understand many reasons for rejecting The Unity, but not this." Before Lovithica could say any more to my own remark, I realized another aspect for the reason why we are even allowed to see this in the first place. The moment of time between that memory and right now has more than nine months in between. That means the choice Amelia made was a most permanent and certain decision... We're all told that every human who is purged has the assumed right to reject us, but even if they do, is their invocation of the right really something they should have? Those who put so much into a purge deserve better than this at least.

"Amelia was trusted with something as sacred and as important with a purge, yet she broke Leibra's heart in ways none of us could have imagined possible. While her woes are mostly psychological, I want to take every chance I have to remind as many Altiri as I can that this is a possible outcome for any who try to purge a human. Anyone even thinking about a purge needs to remember that their target has the freewill to deny any intrusion into their life, not by rejecting the purge, but by rejecting the very person who sent it to them."

"This is a strange reason to make something public that normally wouldn't be." Derria was glaring daggers at Lovithica, as if she had discovered something we never found as obvious. "We knew already this was a risk, and even though this is mostly the first time such has played out, I doubt the scryers up top would willingly reveal this truth to us when we already suspect it, for this cost at least... Something else must be going on as well."

Derria's deductive skills were interesting to me, only because she isn't always like this, and even then, she doesn't say things like this aloud. She makes an excellent point though. Wonder what Lovithica will say as a loyal scryer herself.

"Your guess is as intuitive as mine. At first, I thought it was merely a swift reaction to something the scryers have never seen before; so much pain was inflicted on one of us from the actions of a human so far away, they can never physically touch us."

"At first?" Sherika cherry-picked.

"Surely you've noticed already. It isn't possible to tell with just a glance, but we're beginning to notice a sudden uptick in the range of likelihood that aggressor groups are willing to purge. It's as if the fears we once had are slowly melting away. The purges between number twelve and sixteen happened in much shorter spans between than what we've seen in previous purges; this suggests the practice is becoming more popular, even if by little increments at a time. While it's true that all aggressor groups need to obtain permission and preliminary study first before sending a purge, the queen has no reason to put a stop to this behavior overall. And yet, I think I can feel the control that the royals once had are slipping away with each additional purge. As much as I respect them for all they do, what I've shown you all today proves that they will never understand what anyone goes through when sending a purge, or waiting for it to complete, or the kind of reasons and attachments some of us will have to others on Earth when we want to."

"Are you trying to say that the scryers don't care about this incident, or that they merely wish they could prevent it more by controlling how we purge?"

Lovithica answered my odd question with an eye-opening revelation I think most would be too afraid to utter in secret. "You really think this purge experiment would be open to us if they had any real control of the situation? They let the genie out of the bottle, and now, because of the gradual rising popularity of the purge, it's already reached a point where denying an Altiri the right to purge would be viewed as a grave betrayal of trust, and a disservice to The Unity. What if they try to stop what is already in motion at the wrong time? Such egregious action could lead to defiance never seen before. I don't think the queen has any interest in stopping the purge, but her Royal Scryers have sounded different ever since a year ago, and we now have an idea as to why."

What was it I warned those fools of so many years ago? Once we contact humanity, no matter what, there is no going back from that. Even though I have changed how I've seen some humans on Earth, I still remember all that I tried to warn those scryers of, about what risks we would take if we did institute a first contact protocol. Many things can be fixed or undone, but once someone learns of something, they can never unlearn it. "We've been observing and merging our understanding with these humans for centuries now. What use would trying to nullify the experience be at this point?"

"Exactly Lumina. You would know, right? I mean, I heard your group was engaging in another one of those special projects; a sociological study as usual." I never told Lovithica any of that, and my sisters didn't either. A mutual friend of hers must have snooped. "Among all the trash people walking around down there, I bet you occasionally find a few hidden gems, people that appear worthy of our trust and admiration."

"What's your point exactly?" I know Lovithica has one. She wouldn't bring this up otherwise. I already know of some hidden gems as she says, people who have already amazed me and will continue to do so.

"I just want everyone to be careful with their own emotions. To Leibra's perspective, Amelia was one of those supposed hidden gems. If you ask me, this all likely started from a mistaken assumption about another person, rarely made; yet it happened once, and it may happen again. The last thing I ever want to see repeat is another one of us in the state Leibra is in now." She makes it sound as if we could go visit and comfort Leibra, but I know already the scryers would never allow it, plus they would tear Lovithica apart for even suggesting her physical whereabouts...

Even so, the warning stuck with me for a moment. It wasn't a warning why someone shouldn't purge, instead a warning for one of many negative possible outcomes that could occur as a result of a purge. All I seem to hear about with these purges is how risky and how costly they are to Altiri who invoke them, and yet I know from rumor not every single group feels this way... So what is the virtue then? Did Leibra and her group merely get unlucky? Is it possible that there isn't someone who can share love successfully in this desolate universe we share together?

A different part of me wonders what must have been going through Amelia's mind, as if there was something hidden that she just couldn't say to us Altiri, some deeper meaning or reason for why she rejected the choice she was given. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe I simply want to believe that no human could ever hurt someone this much, so I choose to believe in some alternate explanation instead. Leibra must have wracked her brain with the construct of it a thousand times or more. I really hope she recovers from this one day.

This case does highlight something for me though. The kind of life that we Cy-Stars live now, watching the world of humans as we have been for thousands of years, all of that is forced to come to a total and complete end if – for any reason, the intentions of a purge fail, not just for the Altiri leader sending the signal, but also their entire group of sisters sharing the same fate and burden. Socially speaking, it's like being kicked out of ACS414 entirely, in every single aspect, its existence erased from everything. If this is what people risk when they send a purge, I have to ask why others do it in the first place. Maybe one day, I'll understand what it's like.