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All Yesterday's Parties (Chapter 62)
🕑 Added 2023-11-02 21:40:52 +0000 UTCThe session began with a terror which had until now never visited Aster's household. A civil officer— a human attaché of the state's police force— was standing in the doorway, looking Aster's father over with piercing eyes. This gaze was intensified by his diminutive glasses and their circular lenses, which seemed to focus his eyes in a way that you could be sure he was looking right through you. Beside this man stood Marienne, a cordial smile on her lips, eager as ever to begin the session.
"It's just protocol," she assured the family, seeing Noah and Aster deathly pale. "I will be trying something different today: a drug,” she explained, entering their apartment. “You can understand why an officer needs to watch."
A groan came from Aster's father. "Marienne—"
"Don't worry, Noah, it's for Aster's own good. I simply wish to speed along the treatment, what with all the stress your family must be going through in this time.”
She took a seat on their couch and set her bag aside. “The drug is acclaimed,” she continued in a tone like nothing could be further from worry, while looking up at him with soft eyes. “It helps so many people through their troubles." She then turned this motherly, caring gaze on Aster, who had been watching in horror from the corner of the room. Aster sank back, unable to believe what she was hearing.
"No," she protested weakly, shaking her head. "I'm not taking anything."
Marienne frowned.
"I'm sorry, Aster." She said with that same maternal voice, as though she really were deeply sorry. "You don't have a choice; it's in state's interest that all its people are well, and that means using all the tools at its disposal."
"Marienne, we've only had one session," Noah put in.
"And it didn't go very well, did it?" Marienne countered, sullenly. "Like I said, Noah, this is a sensitive case, and prolonging it during such a period of duress will only harm Aster. We're here to help her, aren't we?" She looked up at him with a pitiful gaze, as though she really were wishing reprimand him. Noah turned away. From the opposite hallway stood Dahlia, who had been watching since Marienne's entrance, brimming with excitement to see just what a high-ranking Mother's Helper could do.
Marienne pulled a small, black container from the case beside her and flipped it open, procuring from it a turquoise pill. The officer had fixed himself in the corner of the living room, directly opposite Aster, and was watching silently. Aster was still shaking her head in silent objection, all the while trembling violently. She looked now and again at her father with an angry, scared expression, petitioning him to do anything. But there was nothing he could do. He could only keep Dahlia, who seemed ready to run into the living room and let all hell loose the second he turned away, back.
"It'll only last twenty minutes,” Marienne said, holding up the pill. “It's a marvelous thing; technology nowadays. It'll allow you to drop those barriers and open up so you can finally begin to heal!"
"No!" Aster shouted in a hoarse voice. "I'm not doing it. I'm not!" She set off towards her room, but the officer began to step near her. She felt herself go dizzy with fear.
They're gonna find out about Peppermint Plains, she thought in absolute panic. They're going to find out about Nancy, and kill her!
"Get away! Get the fuck away!" she started to shriek as the officer reached for her. He snatched her wrists and began to walk her towards Marienne, while Aster thrashed around.
"Miss, please," the officer pleaded with a strained voice. Aster went limp, necessitating that he dragged her, while the all the while continuing to shout, curse, and sob. Dahlia watched on with a mixture of disgust and schadenfreude, while Noah fell into the couch, and clutched his head in his hands. He had to turn his face away as the pill was forced into Aster's mouth.
A warm sensation, like that of plunging into a bath greeted it her. It was not at all unpleasant, though it was totally different to the experience of using the Eden device. She was still in the room, and could see everyone in it, but she was taken suddenly with a feeling of serendipity; like a warm hug was embracing her. Dahlia and her father were being led from the room; Dahlia looking back all the while.
"Feeling better, Aster?" Marienne asked. Aster was now sat on the couch beside her. Aster smiled. "Good. Let's get started then, shall we? Question one — what is your fondest childhood memory?"
With those words, it was like Marienne had pulled a zipper on reality; distant images came forth and began to bleed into actuality, and soon one overpowered the rest, until all but it faded and became as real as the living room which was just before her. Aster saw a stage before her, upon which a hologram of four performers were playing. She squinted, then immediately recognized the four men— it was the Beatles. Aster's heart suddenly rebounded with unbelievable joy, for this— what she was seeing— was one of the most cherished memories of her entire life— the genesis of her love for music— her first ever concert.
She was five years old, and her father had brought her along after noticing how she danced to the old rock songs he used to play in his study. He threw her onto his shoulder and pushed through the crowd, making his way to the front of the stage. Little Aster had seldom ever seen the world outside of her apartment, and took in the giant room with its swarming mass of people like an alien planet, devouring every detail with her boundless childish curiosity.
They approached the stage and the silhouettes grew clearer, and Aster could see; she could connect the magical sounds she was hearing with the actions these men were undertaking, and was at once taken by an epiphany. It was an overwhelming feeling the scale of which has no hope of being understood by a five year old, except with the surface-level appreciation that something was changing; the palette of the world was being defined just a little more. She gazed at the performers how people gaze up at the Sistine Chapel; her large, fiery eyes were wide as saucers with excited abandon. Never before in her short life had she seen people so animated, had she witnessed something so beyond the bounds of ordinary life being created by mere human beings.
The ecstatic little Aster protested desperately for her father to let her down, and when he did she began with her stubby little legs to make a beeline for the stage. She heard the voice of her father crying after her with a tone of half-amusement, half-panic, but she did not care; she had no conscious thought or objective in her young brain except to be as near to that magic as possible. Tears were falling down her cheeks as she relived it, for she realized that that little run towards the magic was what she had been repeating her entire adult life.
—
As Aster grew older, and subsequently became a musician herself, she began to look back on that memory with increasingly more shame. She could no longer see what she had experienced as anything but the flickers of ghosts on stage, as the tortured apparitions of people who no longer had the power to defend themselves robbed of even their very image.
The holographic touring industry was all the rage in Aster's youth, to speak nothing of its popularity by 2066. People were desperate to fill all their idle hours given the collapse of the job market, and watching long dead acts was a popular way to do this. With all the advancements in technology such entertainment ceased to be novelty, for they were now nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
They used proprietary models trained on the artists' repertoire to imbue shows with the aspect of improvisation; to breathe life into the dead. Modeling was similarly applied to the entire corpus of all recorded speech known to that individual, and so five year old Aster flushed with immense embarrassment and awe when John Lennon leaned over the edge of the stage at seeing her run up, scrunched up his nose, and called her the "cutest little girl".
Little Aster had no idea who the Beatles were; she only saw and perceived them the same as she perceived anything flesh and blood. But they were ghosts, torn from their mausoleums at the behest of a society that only saw value in as much as it could consume. Nothing remained sacred, not even the dignity of eternal rest.
Not satisfied with the robbery of their image, labels even went so far as to release albums of “new material”, culled from these proprietary models. Reviewed by teams of “musicologists”, and “experts on the band” (in the honor of authenticity), this new material was paraded out by estates who had no interest in anything except what they could gain; a “respectful extension of their catalog because we can”. Yet, this wasn't even the worst; it was simply the scum floating on top of an ocean of millions of derivative, AI-generated albums, able to be produced by anyone at home, to any specification they wished or dreamed. The significance of human art had become as watered-down as a grain of salt in the ocean.
But now all of Aster's trepidation, all of her thoughts on this, had melted away; had suddenly ceased to matter. It was like the lightest care in the world; she could so easily think on it as a trifle and let it go, that she couldn't help but laugh. Why was she always so hard on everything? She sighed, then turned her head up at the image on stage with all the child-like wonder with which she had once beheld it.
"What does being a musician mean to you, Aster?" Marienne's voice suddenly asked, sounding from nothing as though it fell from the sky. Aster looked around, but wasn't disoriented by not finding Marienne. She instead felt excited to answer.
“Everything,” she said with no hesitation. There was an eager quivering in her belly; she had waited her life to be asked this. “It means having the privilege and the power to be able to communicate with others beyond words; to speak directly to the heart instead of the brain.”
Aster's father had run up behind her, and tossed her back onto his shoulders. She looked down, his face had apologetic contours as he nodded graciously to John Lennon while taking himself and his daughter away.
“You believe the heart is above the brain?”
“The brain is only useful insofar as it helps us interpret the feelings of the heart. It is useless outside of that. It is only an organ meant to regulate biological processes, and outside of the body serves no role.”
“But what about intelligence? Does that not matter to you?”
Aster watched Paul McCartney's Hofner bass glint under the warm, bright spotlight. She wondered if she could find one like that in Peppermint Plains, or if that'd be too cliché. Her father was evidently enamored with it; he kept pointing to it while chattering on at her indistinctly, smiling.
“Aster?”
“Intelligence is not necessary to feel loved— the only thing that matters. Intelligence is only an evolutionary trait developed to navigate a world of predators, and thus is intrinsically at odds with companionship. Nobody who is intelligent has ever been truly happy.”
“Why do you think that, Aster?”
“Just look throughout history.”
A very long pause followed. Aster watched contently as the performers fluttered about on stage, and seemed not perturbed in the least with the situation. As abruptly as Marienne's voice had intruded it seemed to have vanished into the wind, taking with it any recollection that she had ever even spoken. Nothing mattered now but the sight before her and the warmth of father's proximity to her. Her heart was abounding with joy, swelling like a bag stuffed to the brim with flowers. She seemed to be storing all of this joy deep inside, like a squirrel readying itself for winter, as if she could take it all with her as insurance against misery.
After this very long pause, Marienne resumed. “What was your worst childhood memory?”
The room, as if on command, suddenly went dim. The holographs faded and the music ceased, and her father walked away into a crowd which went up with him in smoke.
“Dad!” she cried out, splaying her hand forward to reach through the misty remnants of the audience. The haze swirled around her grasp, and suddenly Aster's stomach churned as though she were on a merry-go-round. Her vision blurred, and she was hurried through what felt like an array of doors between disjointed rooms. Flashes of image and motion appeared and disappeared almost instantly, then started piling upon each other with such incredible speed she thought she would be sick. A white hot-heat seemed to emanate from some place in her brain, and Aster was convinced she would die.
She began to scream. At first it was a mewling, pathetic gurgle of fear, but as the agony, and soon the terror of death grew so did her outcry. The visuals swirled around, convincing her she was being swept down a drain into purgatory. She was sure that Marienne had fried her brain, or that she was being physically tortured and this was psychological effect of that. She continued to scream, then shrieked as loud as she could. She closed her eyes so tightly she thought they would pop, and then everything went still. With incredible hesitance she opened them.
"What do you see?" Marienne's disembodied voice asked. Aster's heart sank.
"A long hallway, with two elevators on each end,” she answered in a barely audible murmur. She looked around with horror, knowing full well where she was. She could hear Marienne's lips part.
"My, my— the Penthouses. Whatever were you doing up there?"
Aster did not answer— could not answer— for the strain upon her chest was so intense she could barely breathe. She was peering down the long, narrow hallway towards a door at the very end. Though she wished to tear her eye from it she could not, and without thinking her little legs began to carry her down the hall towards it.
Aster immediately began to panic at the loss of control.
Stop! she commanded herself. You fucking idiot, stop! But her legs continued to take her along, and the door neared. She began to hyperventilate; began to slip into a frenzy as it came before her— it was Nancy's door.
“Please!” she cried again. She went to claw at her legs to force them still but her arms would not obey either.
“Is there something you see?” Marienne asked.
“No!” Aster shouted, her voice tremulous. She was finally, directly before it. “There's nothing— there's nothing here,” she stammered.
“I hear it in your voice, Aster,” she replied in a reproachful tone. “Have we not been clear? You know there's no use in hiding anything; it only makes things worse.”
“There's nothing here!”
“Is that really true? Look around you, does it not ring a bell?”
Aster was shaking her head violently. She didn't need to look to know the grim truth before her, but she couldn't help notice something out of the corner of her eye. She turned, and saw that the hallway was indeed familiar, but not for the reason she had expected. This wasn't Nancy's hallway, yet she had been here before.
Her eyes focused in particular on the wainscoting which ran in floral flourishes along the length of the hall. She suddenly remembered with great vividness how enraptured her young eye had been following it as she walked this very path. She looked around in astonishment as the strangeness of the it all fell away. A part of Aster's subconscious was touched with what felt like a warm finger tracing along it, as if someone were guiding her across a map of her memories to this very scene.
“It does, doesn't it?” Marienne continued, hearing silence. “Is there a door before you?”
Aster was pulled from her recollection and turned her attention back towards that terrible door.
“Knock.”
A great horror welled up inside her, yet her little hand came down and delivered a rhythmic knock. Nancy's door began at once to open, and Aster started to scream; began to wail. "Stay in there, please! Stay in there!" she pleaded desperately, beginning to sob. Her voice broke as it gave its pathetic petitions, cracking like pretty china dropped on the floor.
A white, sterile light poured from the doorway as it opened, blinding Aster. Her heart was less an organ at this point than it was a battering ram, wishing to tear clean through her chest. It's all over, she lamented. Nancy is dead. Her family is dead. She is dead. But to her surprise, what appeared in the doorway was not Nancy, but two tiny children.
Aster's breath faltered as she looked down upon them. It was a boy and herself.
The scene came before her with such vividness and charm; that lost feeling. Viewing her beside the boy was like viewing the sun in tandem with the moon, and her body felt arrested with a warmth she had long felt dead. She wished to move forward, to close the gap with this wonderful reborn hope, but was repelled by such a hideous impulse that she felt she might black out.
The happiness was suddenly gone, and the children moved back inside the room. Aster was struck with every manner of anxiety telling her not to follow, yet with great, terrible resolve she entered through the door, and saw the boy lying on the floor, motionless. Little Aster lay beside his body, shaking him to no effect. Marienne called from above, urging Aster on.
"And what are these children doing?"
Aster could not answer. She was transfixed on the goings before her; utterly engaged in seeing this play out, hoping all the while for some sort of joyful turn of events; that the boy would wake up. Marienne asked again.
"He's not moving, is he? The boy?"
Aster shook her head. "No. I'm trying to shake him." There was the sound of quickened breathing on Marienne's end.
"It looks like you didn't try hard enough."
"No, that's not true," she said, watching the tiny version of herself still desperately shaking him. She closed her eyes, and then when she opened them found herself shaking the boy. Suddenly she was overcome with the urge that her only purpose in this existence was to not fail in this one aim. The only thing that mattered was to wake him up. She jostled him; timidly at first, but then with stronger and stronger pushes, until his body was jerking up and down like a log twirling in turbid stream. Dark blotches bloomed on his shirt as Aster hunched over and began sobbing. Her frantic pushes were growing weaker.
"Is that crying I hear, Aster?" Aster did not respond, but began to sob violently at the question which answered for itself.
"Why are you crying?"
"I don't know!" she howled. “I don't fucking know what's happening!”
"I'll tell you why you cry. You cry because there is nothing in this existence more wretched than the death of a loved one, Aster. There is no deeper damage done to the soul than to watch a piece of your reality slip away forever."
"Shut up!" she screamed.
“Scream all you like, but this is on you. This is on your inadequacy. This is all—” She paused. There was the sound of excited breathing, then an exhale. "Tell me, what exactly do you see? Is there anybody else there?"
Aster looked up. In the doorway were two men, arguing. They looked towards the two children, then back at each other, gesticulating in argumentative fashion. She could not see their expressions for they wore featureless black masks.
She brought her knees to her chest, and began to rock.
"Answer me, Aster." Marienne repeated with a severe voice. “ANSWER ME.”
“There's two fucking men!” she shrieked.
“And what about them? What are they doing?!”
“They're just fucking standing there— in the doorway!”
“And what are you doing?”
Aster looked towards her young self, who was huddled over the boy sobbing.
“Nothing, right?”
“Shut up.”
“They're right there, and you do nothing.”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
“Now, Aster, do not raise your voice. Your first lesson is to realize that anger is not the antidote for everything.”
Aster was silent. What she saw in the room shook into a muddled mess of hysterical crying and her violent shaking.
“If you wish to do something, tell me what you see. Who are these men?”
Aster would not look up. She withdrew her knees further, and began to mumble to herself. A short silence passed, punctuated only by the sobs of both her selves.
“WHO ARE THEY?!” Marienne suddenly shrieked. “LOOK UP, AND TELL ME, ASTER! YOU HAVE TO SEE WHO THEY ARE!"
"I DON'T KNOW!” Aster screamed “THEY HAVE A LAMB WITH THEM— HE'S..."
He was eating a wreath of roses. A perfect little, circular bouquet was in his mouth. He munched on it proudly, and Aster thought he was the cutest thing she had ever seen.
"What?" Marienne responded with a voice hoarse, as if through throatfuls of sand.
"A lamb eating roses; that's what's on their armbands!" Though Aster could not see her, she could almost visualize her reaction by just the sounds she made. The labored breathing which followed, the slight pause which felt like ages.
Then suddenly, a pitiful feeling wormed its way into her gut. She was suddenly overwhelmed with the feeling to ask Marienne for help. It was the least she could do; if there were no hope before her maybe it could come from above, detest the owner of the voice as she may.
“How do I save him? Please, tell me!”
But there was no response. The men started to move away, and Aster's heart started in anxiety. She jumped forward and into the body of her younger self.
“Hello?!” Aster pleaded, receiving no response. “If—if you help me maybe I can do something! They're leaving! They're exiting the room! Come on, tell me— how do I save him?!”
“Marienne, what's this shouting about?!”
Aster froze. It was the voice of her father. She looked up and around in a frantic daze, as if he unlike Marienne would be there.
“Dad?!” she called out, looking every which way. “Dad?!” But the voices which followed grew muddled, and she felt as though she were floating; moving somewhere.
“What's he doing with her?!” she heard her father shout as though he was under water.
“Taking her to her room, Noah. She will be fine, it wears off in under an hour.” Marienne's tone had changed. She sounded skittish, and urgent. Aster's heart was rapid fire.
She returned to the boy, and began to compress his chest, hoping this would jolt him awake.
“I do not appreciate you screaming at my daughter, and I do not appreciate you treating her with drugs, Marienne!”
Wake up, goddammit!
“You should take better care of your children, then, Noah. But don't worry, I must withdraw from this case anyway.”
Tears were clouding Aster's eyes, and the boy's form kaleidoscoped within them.
“What? What do you mean?” he said with palpable worry.
“There's a sudden conflict of interest. I cannot continue to treat her when I will be appearing at her mother's hearing.”
Aster withdrew her hands finally, shirking from the cool she felt on the boy's body; the implicit seal of death. Her father was gasping incoherently. Suddenly, she looked in the direction of his voice, and saw him. She was in the hall of her apartment and her parents were in the doorway. Her father was making that same grotesque gasp while her mother reached down, hollering as she took Aster into her arms. Little Aster was so dazed she made not a movement as she was lifted up, but laid still and gentle, like a marble statue in her mother's arms.
Margreta opened her mouth, but Marienne spoke over her.
“Come what may, I wish you all the best of luck.”
