[SESSION id=1.10]: Parallelism
When confronting truth, there are inherently multiple lenses through which to consider its many tomes and tokens.
— Lillian Thorn, On Erasure and Elimination of Truth, Apologia
Scheduler
The bed was equally warm. The air smelled far less sterile. The space was far smaller. And there was a window. Not an ostentatious thing like in Jazz Star's home in Central City. Not a modest thing like my childhood bedroom. Large enough to climb through. Small enough that it didn't make me feel tiny.
Floors made of wood. Walls painted different colours. One almost phthalo. One ochre. Two a sort of peach. Not the same temporary housing. Perhaps not even temporary.
Jazz Thorn's arm was wrapped around me, just as it had been before. How did I know it was her and not Jazz Star?
Her lips touched my neck, sending shivers down my spine. "That was really nice last night, Lillian," she wasn't whispering so much as speaking at the lowest possible volume. "Never had a better lover. Though I suppose you know that."
"Other Lillian," I said, hoping she wouldn't feel let down. She pulled me closer.
Jazz kissed my neck more. "Oh? It's been more than a supercycle! I need you to read more of my book!"
I rolled over to face her. My body much lighter than it had been the last time I was there. She was, yet again, nude. I realised I was also, but I didn't feel too bothered by it.
"Does your wife know about me visiting?" I shook my head at the notion that my wife could cheat on me with myself in a roundabout way. Her lips touched mine softly. "I'll take that as a no. Where are we, and what's a supercycle?"
"Three hundred sixty cycles. [city[91]]. Parallel of [city[0]] by several cycles." The words made little sense, but I nodded as though they were entirely clear. "Lillian told me one of her greatest fears was accidentally winding up here when she took a conveyance, so we took a vacation and finally stopped in."
"I'll have to apologise for stealing a day of her time off," I said as my skin flushed. "Can you not look at me like I'm an innocent piece of meat?"
"You still have her body, and it improved by leaps and bounds when she —" Jazz took a deep breath. "Not the point. You should have a look in the mirror. She does excellent work."
The body that wasn't mine carried me, begrudgingly, across the room and into a washroom with a broad mirror, two wash basins, and a walk-in shower with two wash heads. Turning on the light with my eyes closed was necessary to get a good look, but for whatever reason I couldn't convince myself to open them. The cool yellow glow behind my eyelids burned to red for several seconds before I had the courage to open them.
"She looks just like me," I couldn't explain why I was surprised. Of course Lillian looked just like me. She was me in some way. "A little darker in the skin maybe. With somewhat brighter eyes."
Jazz wrapped her arms around my waist. "This? This is what you look like?" Her head rested on my shoulder, and our faces looked good beside each other.
"Wait. Did you get taller?" I could have sworn she stood just barely below me before. "Or wait. She made herself shorter. To be more like her mother." I looked back in the mirror. In that framing it was clear. I looked like my mother's daughter in a way I'd never really noticed before.
"Not to be weird, but that'd be a gross reason to make herself shorter," Jazz jostled my head a little. Clearly she knew where my mind was tumbling. "When we were younger, my Lillian always said that being tall made her feel out of sorts with her body. All the girls and women around her were much shorter. She internalised that."
"I guess I never thought of that," I shrugged with the words and moved toward the shower. "You may be a perfect facsimile of my Jazz, and I may currently be filling in for your Lillian, but we're not sharing the shower, even if that's your norm."
"You're no fun." She closed the space and wrapped her arms around me, our skin-to-skin contact warming me a little too much. A soft kiss to the top of my head was her short farewell. "I'll get your morning ready. Tea?"
"Please."
Process
An overview of an ordinary cycle with Jazz Thorn.
Wake up. Bat away compliments and flirtations. Alert Jazz that I was still not her Lillian. Shower separately, me first. Once again apologise for stealing Lillian's vacation with her. Dress in the obnoxiously cute clothes Lillian had packed for their vacation while Jazz showered. Share breakfast with Jazz wrapped in a robe.
That was our start every cycle. Conversation over breakfast was about how different our worlds were. Her [world], which I eventually sorted how to say, and my home world, which were the same world, if a touch different to each other. Hers was built on efficiency and duty. Mine was built on something different. Neither of us could quite pin down what.
Once breakfast finished, Jazz would tease, dropping her robe as she left the table to go get dressed. Each cycle, I begged her to stop trying to seduce me. Each cycle I held less resolve. She was so much like my Jazz.
In the absence of her demanded intimacy, we spent the next several 'degrees', which I sorted were like hours but shorter by far, in domestic facsimile. Perhaps degrees were more like minutes? Three hundred sixty degrees in a cycle. Two hundred forty cycle ticks in a degree. Their cycle was just as long as our day, simply divided differently. A degree was like four minutes.
Where was I?
Domestic facsimile. Jazz and I would sit together. She'd tell me about [world], her life, her Lillian, and I'd tell her about Mother and Jazz and Rain and Halo. That caught her out. Both my mother and hers were still around in my world, but only her father was around in hers. I hoped knowing my father was never around might help ease things. It didn't.
After lunch, Jazz would have me begin to read more of her book. Apparently her Lillian didn't know about it yet. The more I burned through her notes, the more doodles and sketches and notes of my own existed. I didn't tell her that her writing was suspiciously like Other Lillian and Other Jazz. Part of me knew they were the same women.
When I'd exhausted existing pages, she'd take me to supper, but not before we spent two hours getting ready – something about ritual made Jazz feel more in control. [city[91]] didn't have very many restaurants. That meant we had to adopt a rotation fairly quickly. Even that became part of the process.
At supper's conclusion, Jazz would take me to her favourite views in the city. She had plenty, but much like food, there was a limit. This created a separate loop. After almost thirty cycles, I began to grow numb to the disconnect between the [world]s.
Jazz knew how to woo a girl. It was really no wonder I married her. Or rather. The other version of me.
Bed time came, and Jazz would make one more attempt at seduction before kissing me lightly and pulling me to the bed with her. Each kiss seemed to get a small bit deeper. A small bit more passionate. But it was an easy thing. Who could blame either of us for it? I was courting her in my world. She was married to me in this world. It did very little harm to accept that.
Eventually we would settle in properly to sleep, and I'd find myself wishing to go back. I wanted to see Jazz Star again. I wanted to stop feeling guilty that I was attracted to Jazz Thorn. I wanted life to be normal. Why couldn't I have an ordinary life.
Lillian Thorn's body may look just like mine, but her mind was not. She dreamt of horrors. She dreamt of past fears realised. I watched Mother die in front of me every night. I watched myself destroy friendships left and right. I watched a workstation explode with data then literally explode with overwhelm. Lillian was traumatised with her past, and she wasn't facing any of it.
But one dream in particular changed things. Sitting in a coffee shop across from Jazz, staring out the window, watching the sky do impossible things and feeling pride. She dreamt it every few cycles, and it helped to reset her. I asked Jazz about it once, and she said 'it was the moment we both truly saw each other, even if neither of us knew it yet'.
Many times, I had to ask Jazz how long the vacation was going to be. It went on much longer than it had any right to.
Permission
The cycle that changed the pattern.
We awoke, much the same, wrapped in each other's arms. The wooden floors, wooden window frames, excitedly coloured walls all greeted me, aesthetic still pleasing, calming, a welcome consistency. Jazz's hands were warm, her arms were tight but not demanding, her breath on the back of my neck reminded me of her affection, deep but not cloying. Jazz loved this woman whose body I stole.
The shower was entirely too hot, but my body craved it. I craved it.
Breakfast was cordial and polite, as always. But she didn't bare herself to me as she stood to shower. A tear fell, sliding first down her cheek, then to the curve of her chin, where it dripped, glass and pain, to the floor, shattering.
My arms were around her. My body too close. And for the first time with Jazz Thorn, I couldn't stop myself from feeling like she was mine.
"Anything to take away your pain," I whispered as my hands traced forbidden curves that they knew too well. "Anything to bring you peace."
My lips found hers, and the contact was coming home. The body I inhabited wanted this so much, and I couldn't hold it back. She deserved to feel comfort, to feel love.
"Lillian, please," Jazz wasn't fighting against it as she rasped the words. "Only if you mean it."
At last I gave in. I begged for more. Begged for everything.
Except that I didn't. I was still in bed. It had been a dream. I was desperately longing for Jazz Thorn, deep in the bones of the body I'd stolen. "Jazz," I whispered, my voice cracking, "I'm sorry."
Her arm pulled me tighter, closer. "You have no reason to apologise, Miss Thorn," she didn't sound broken. "You have convictions. I admire that about you. It's Lillian's best quality, even if some cycles it drives me to the brink." She turned me around easily to face her. "I don't want you to give in to those desires at the cost of yourself."
The tears were already wetting my pillow. "I think I dreamed of giving in."
"Your moans in your sleep would tend to suggest you did," her face was flirting, but her eyes spoke of concern. "And who could blame you. It's been almost two seasons, after all."
"And that's half a supercycle? Half a year?" The admission sounded insane. "This isn't really a vacation, is it?"
Jazz turned serious. Her face grew tight, and wrinkles formed at the corners of her eyes.
"Lillian was put on permanent hiatus after she ran some high level command from her supervisor's workstation." Jazz rolled her eyes. "[city[0]] hasn't been the same since. Actually, [world] hasn't. It's like we're running at half-power."
"Do you think," I fought back the obvious conclusion, but I had to say it, had to admit it possible, "that my world is responsible for that?"
"It's not," Jazz grinned. "Your world was around for almost three seasons – if your first appearance is to be trusted – before she broke ours."
"She made more." Not a question. An accusation. I didn't need Jazz's acknowledgement. "She's trying to destroy everything. For what?"
"For the one thing she never felt she had," Jazz's eyes were watering. "a choice."
"Have other Lillians come to visit, or just me?" I knew the answer already. "Don't answer that. What makes me special, do you think?"
"That I couldn't say."
"Question," I said, realising there was important ground I had to cover.
Jazz grinned and shot back, "Answer," before I could ask.
"Why did Lillian not illustrate On Erasure?" They were both artists, I recalled from my first time with Jazz. "If she was the better artist, as you say."
Jazz shot up. She dragged me to sitting with her. "Why haven't you mentioned it before?"
Obviously she would ask that. "You've had a lot on your plate, Jazz." Not the whole truth, but enough. "Adding that Lillian's manifesto fell into my lap via a family friend? There was never really a time to share it."
"So then you know?" She didn't meet my gaze. "About what she was doing?"
"How long did you know you were marrying a suicidal woman whose only joy in life was creating art from injustice?" A bit too direct, even for my tastes, but something told me Jazz would appreciate the directness. "You know that it doesn't just go away, right?"
"I still hoped. I had to hope." Jazz pulled me to her and squeezed enough to pull the breath out of me. "And that's why, when I found her again, I had to. I had to pull her close to me. To show her the beauty she couldn't see."
"And that explains On Creation," I mumbled. She gasped at the words. "It was working. You should know that. It was really working."
"Lillian, doll," Jazz said around a pained smile, "if it weren't working, you and I wouldn't be sharing this bed."
"Point taken," I grimaced at the thought. "Can you imagine, waking up to find your dead wife suddenly returned." Jazz slapped me at the words. "I deserved that."
"I can. I've imagined it every night since she realised I was her childhood best friend," Jazz admitted, barely audible. "Except, more imagined waking up to her gone. Waking up to a world without her. Waking up and having to face all of this," she gestured wildly, flailing her arms, "without the one person who gets me."
"Except there were two. And the first is already gone." I pictured Mother. "I'm sorry."
"I am too," Jazz said. "If it makes you feel any better," she smiled, "I think I've been holding onto you so tightly because you remind me of Diana. Best of both worlds. Once you finally leave."
"Are we still under the impression I will?"
"Probably as soon as my Lillian has done whatever she's doing."
"Cryptic as always," I said, standing, "but that's fine. Care to engage in a bit of intimate domesticity?"
"How intimate?"
"As much as you're comfortable with. This body is in desperate need of something, and I can't fix it myself."
Worker
From that point forward, I was far more relaxed, and I continued reading through Jazz's book. At the last, something came to me and shook my understanding of the work.
"You've never shown this to Lillian, have you?" I asked as I finished the final chapter of the work, almost a full supercycle – a year – after arriving. "Not a single word of it."
"Caught in my own tangled web, Miss Thorn," Jazz grinned as her skin flushed, just barely visible below the natural dark tan of it. "It was to be a gift for her. A way to show her it was okay to just accept life and be happy." After a second, she let her head tilt, looking at the floor. "Hopefully, you've learned as much?"
"She won't understand it." The words were true, but they felt hollow. "She is fundamentally incapable of it."
"Well. Sure. But that's why you've been writing these notes," Jazz pulled out a massive notebook of my work. She'd been hiding it under the couch. When had she been saving them. "Lillian might not understand this, but she'll understand you. Sorry if it feels like I've been using you."
"Are you really apologising for that when I've been —" I stopped myself before I said that I'd been taking advantage of her for more than eight year-divisions. "Point is, consider your accounts with me settled."
"Fine." She didn't look convinced, so I let her simmer a while. "Have you found this book?"
"Not that I know of. But it's been a long time since you saw me, right? I assume Erasure and Creation existed before the first time, right?" As I spoke, Jazz nodded, shook her head, grimaced, smiled, and much more before she finally settled on a noncommittal shrug. "Then it goes without saying that I'm probably never going to find this in my world."
"That makes a measure of sense. It didn't exist when Lillian made the fork, so it might not exist at all." Jazz took a deep, unsettled breath. "We'll be fine, right?"
"One can only hope." My arms were around her before I could think, and I was kissing her cheek. "If you're really worried about it, then as soon as I'm gone, ask her."
"If you leave." Jazz said, acknowledging what neither of us could. Would I ever go back to my Jazz? How long would it have been? A few minutes? A few days? Had I been gone a whole year?
"Burn that bridge when we get to it."
"Cross," Jazz corrected and winked.
As if breaking some spell, I awoke. I was connected to a dozen tubes and wires and more. Something was in my throat, and I couldn't speak. Breathing around it was a challenge. My head throbbed as the light of the room came into focus.