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1ff · 8 years ago

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The Society of Multiples, Chapter 3

Chapter One here

Chapter Two here

Here’s my NaNoWriMo novel, which I’m currently editing into a “second draft” and sharing here online. This is *not* the final version; but it’s good enough to share, and I’m hoping for some feedback and constructive criticism along the way.

So far everyone has been really awesome. Too nice, really. Stop being so nice. Feel free to point out where I’m going wrong, either in storytelling, grammar, characterization, representation, etc. Also, THANK YOU!!! The encouragement is giving me incentive to keep going even though our group in general is putting up with some seriously stupid depression right now.

Since I’ll be posting at some really random times, I’ll offer that if anyone wants I can tag them whenever I release a chapter? If you want this let me know.

-Ronin Ellis

if you love me you’ll reblog

Chapter 3

While on the coach bus from Lake Victor to Red River City, I had plenty of time to digest it all. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I'd done the right thing. There would be too many questions about why I was following Jace, why I was in a position to see him aim his gun, why I'd acted so strangely when dealing with the waitress and her headmate- whose names, I read in the news, were Winnie and Marley. On top of that, the obvious questions of why no one in my faked group was a registered person. So I'd run, as I'd done before. This was the third time I was reinventing myself, starting a new life. I'd gotten good at it. I knew where to go for work and housing where they wouldn't ask for ID. Since I'd never registered any of my false identities, I couldn’t prove any education or experience. I had no bank account or credit rating. It was possible to fix this situation in theory. I could always register one of my fakes- presumably Jan, the name I was given at birth- but then I would be stuck with that name, and I'd never be able to get any other name registered, since no dMRI would demonstrate any other mind inside my skull. In fact, just by going on and to get the test done, I risked the possibility of being detected as a singlet- and then, that would be the end for me.

But maybe it wasn't enough to just move this time. Maybe it was time to make a few new changes. I couldn't risk being rediscovered; I'd come too close this time. I couldn't keep going with Jan, Eron, and Tigh. I didn't really need to revamp everything though; it would be enough to just rename them. To make it easy to remember, how about- Jake, Eli, and Taft?

It felt strange renaming these three disguises. Names were so important to most people- they wouldn't just throw them around like this, once they have one they hang on tight to it, a token of their identity that stands for who they are forever. Naming a new person who comes into a system is a big deal in that system's life. I remember the ceremony and importance when I “invented” Eron and Tigh. It would be anathema to most people to even consider renaming.

When I got off the boss, it was as Eli. The same person as Eron, really. Black hair a tangled mess from sleeping on the bus, limbs aching from the seats that were too small to sleep in, makeup a smeared mess. As I headed straight for the public switchroom I started rehearsing how I would work my way into a new life here.

When you live your life under the constant threat like I do, you learn to keep physical money in a safe place. I hadn’t saved up as much as I wanted, but it would be enough to get me on my feet. Getting around was a hassle; I’d ditched my cellphone in the lake on my way out of town, which was the right call, but now I had to find things the hard way.

The first few nights were spent sleeping under bushes in the cold, damp, Great Lakes air, while spending the day in the main branch library downtown working frantically to find a cheap apartment and a job.

My first night in my own apartment, I didn’t even care that I had no bed or mattress. There was heat in the barely-legal suite, and a carpeted floor. After what I just went through it was like sleeping in a rich man’s king-size bed.

It was two months later that I was in a coffeeshop wasting time after work, and I saw Jace's face again. I saw the face before I heard the context of the news broadcast; I almost didn't recognize him at first, stripped of makeup and put into a formless grey jumpsuit. It was his mugshot; or her mugshot, or their mugshot, it was hard to tell at this point. The caption underneath read “Jace/Rhonda – murder” and the face staring into the camera seemed lifeless and dull. The eyes were dark and deep-set into a pale face with the remnants of whispy balding hair and three days worth of stubble. The police who took this mugshot had gone out of their way to make them look awful. Even for a criminal, this degree of degradation, degendering, and dehumanizing was shocking.

I stood up and moved closer to the television. The volume had been turned down low, but I could make out what the newscaster was saying:

“...employed at the Grand Victor Hotel, where he'd developed an unhealthy obsession with co-worker Winnie. The suspect is believed to be a singlet, possessing only one identity and living a lie to appear normal. He had invented a headmate by the name of Rhonda, who is unregistered and believed to have been a disguise. Police have not confirmed rumours of a third false identity. The suspect, who police are referring to as Jace/Rhonda in the absence of a clearer identity, was found pointing a gun from a concealed location along a nearby mountain path. He was discovered before he had the opportunity to act on whatever impulses led him there- by a local named Eron, who has since gone missing-”

And there was my face, stolen from the Facebook page I'd deleted as I left. It showed Eron with black hair and grey eyes, smirking against the mountain backdrop. I nearly dropped my cover, gasped and stepped back. I forced myself to hold still and not react.

“-and is presumed to have left the province before he could be questioned. Police have asked that anyone with any information contact them regarding Eron's whereabouts, or his headmates Tigh and Jan...” There were their faces too, smiling at the camera.

I didn't listen any further. I took the last bite from my chocolate croissant, grabbed my paper coffee cup, and left the coffeeshop in what I hoped seemed like a calm and natural manner but probably came across as scared and hurried.

I was about three blocks down before I made a sharp right turn to lose myself into a crowd that was gathered around a local busker performing a dance in bodypaint and revealing faux fur costume.

The distraction didn't work- there was a woman behind me keeping pace, trying to look natural just like me, failing just like me.

Had she noticed? Was I imagining this? No, she was definitely following. I'd learned to trust my instincts; I knew how to observe people, a skill I'd developed over years trying to blend in. She was trying not to look directly at me, but when I made a sharp left at the next intersection I caught her looking carefully at my face, obviously trying to match it to the one she'd seen on the television.

She was observant too; she knew she'd been caught. She smiled, raised a hand to wave.

“Ennis, I've been looking all over for you,” she said, rushing to catch up to me.

I inhaled deeply. “I'm not-”

“I'm so glad to have caught you out here alone,” she said, stressing the last word carefully. She rushed up to me, staring at me with wide blue eyes, smiling almost believably. She looked directly into my eyes, watching for a response.

“I-”

“And such good luck, I mean- here we both are,” she laughed in a friendly and social way, “both alone, what good timing, right?”

I stopped, stared back into her eyes. Was she saying what I thought she was saying?

She stepped closer, whispering, “I caught your reactions. I saw it all. Don't worry, I'm a friend.”

“A friend to who?” I whispered back, still careful to not drop Eli's vocal mannerisms.

“A friend to people who are alone.” She glanced around quickly; in this crowd, we were definitely not alone, and drawing attention. “Why don't we go somewhere private to talk?”

I nodded slowly. My heart was racing; I couldn't believe this was happening. I hadn't met another singlet- at least one I knew of, for years.

“My apartment is empty. It's safe there. What do you say?”

I nodded. I knew I was in serious danger; if the situation wasn't what I thought it was, if it was a trap or a misunderstanding, this could be it- I wasn't even entirely sure what they would do to me if I was found out, but I knew it would probably involve nonconsensual “therapy,” which would be a euphemism for some kind of psychological torture. I'd heard rumours of electroshock, ice baths, and permanent incarceration in dark asylums. I had no idea how much of it was truth or reality; nobody talked about singlets. So many people didn't even know we exist.

I decided to follow her and find out what happened next. She led me a few blocks away to an three-story walk-up apartment building, and I followed her up two flights of stairs and down the hall to her apartment. I was getting increasingly uneasy; was this a trap? Why did she seem to feel so safe with someone she didn't even know? I realized as she unlocked the door to her home that we were both agreeing to take an equal, balanced risk. She knew the risk, and had probably taken it before.

Her apartment was small inside; a couple of couches, bookshelf, a kitchen separated by a short counter. There was a man sitting in a chair reading a book; he looked up when we entered.

“Eris? Who's this?” He took off his reading glasses, brushed his long hair out of his face.

“It's okay, Kane. He's one of us.” She shut the door behind me; I found myself standing, fidgeting, not sure what to say.

Kane put his book down, stood and put out his hand. “I”m Kane. What's your name?”

I shook his hand hesitantly. “I'm-” I was about to say Eli, but suddenly realized that this wasn't the correct answer. This man was Kane, singularly, without headmates. Kane was his actual name, who he was when he didn’t have to pretend.

“It's okay,” he said, smiling. “I imagine right now you're feeling very confused and you have a lot of questions. Have you ever met another singlet before? That you know of?”

I shrugged. “Once. Maybe. Years ago. I wasn't sure.”

“Have a seat,” suggested Eris. “Kane, maybe some tea?”

I nodded, slowly taking off my coat and sitting down. I was sitting awkwardly on the edge of my seat, as though I might need to jump up without notice to dodge a gun or an explosion.

“How did you find him?”

“I was just in the cafe, and the news came on. There was a story about our friend here.” She smiled at me. “Apparently you're a bit of a hero.”

I shrugged. I could feel my face flushing. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”

“And now your good deed might be getting you in trouble, I take it?”

“I could get found out. I've been in hiding for a long time.” I looked up at both of them, so calm and reassured. “And you two? Are you pretending to be like them?”

“To be multiple? Yes. We both have identities we've constructed in order to fool other people. But we're safe here together. In this apartment we can be ourselves.”

“What’s a ‘multiple?’”

“It's what we call ordinary people, the ones who have more than one mind in their head. We figured if they get to make up a word to call us, we should get to make up a word to call them.”

“That makes sense.” I felt a long pause in the air, and then I exhaled slowly.

“It's real, isn't it?” I said, dropping Eli's voice finally. “You're actually here? I found you?”

Eris smiled. She'd obviously detected the change in voice. “Yes. You don't have to pretend here. And there are more like us; we don't know how many there are out there, but there's probably a lot more than any of us ever thought. There's a group of us who meet weekly here in Red River City.”

Kane brought the tray with tea. I hesitated.

“Something wrong with the tea?” Kane asked.

“I'm so used to measuring out sugar or honey or cream based on whichever identity I'm pretending to be. I hadn't really stopped to wonder how much I want.”

“All of us go through that,” he reassured me. “We finally get a chance to let our guard down, and we realize that we don't even know who we are anymore. You're safe now, though. You get to explore your own personality and figure yourself out.”

I stirred in one small spoonful of sugar, tasted the tea. It was fine. I looked around the apartment; Kane and Eris were watching me patiently. I took a deep breath.

“I don't even know where to start... how did you two get your names? Are Kane and Eris names of your fake identities, or your own names?”

“Eris was the name I was born with. Kane was originally named Abel.”

Kane smiled and shrugged. “It kind of made sense. I was born with a limp- grew out of it mostly, surgery took care of the rest. People were always wondering why all of my identities used the cane the same way... but really I didn't know how to fake using it any other way. I kind of thought the cane had a more consistent and true identity that I did.”

I nodded. “I feel like that sometimes. I don't even have a name. I don't really know who I am... sometimes I wake up in the morning and already I'm thinking in the mindset of one of my fakes... if I'm lucky and I have the morning to myself and 'they' aren't there, I get to have a coffee and look out my window and have some peace. But it doesn't last long... I haven't really 'been myself' around other people since I was a child... and I've never-” That was it. I couldn't go any further; suddenly I found myself bawling like an idiot, hiding my face in my hands, wiping away tears, shaking with a sense of humiliation and relief. I slumped onto a chair, feeling like an idiot. I couldn't believe myself; I didn't even know these people. I realized that at some point Eris had come over and put her arm around me; Kane had put a box of tissues in front of me. I tried to centre myself, tried to come back to a sense of stability, but despite an entire lifetime of training and self-control I couldn't do it.

“It's okay, cry it out,” Eris reassured me. “It's entirely natural. It would be surprising if you didn't. This is a very powerful moment for you.”

“What are we going to do?” I sobbed. I'd finally said it aloud, the question that had been plaguing me since I was only five years old and I had realized that I was different in a very dangerous and unacceptable way. “What do they even do to us? I keep hearing stories about all kinds of medical-” I broke down again, incoherent.

“That's why we're joining together, helping each other out,” Kane said calmly. “We're going to help each other to stay away from that fate. Yes, they don't like us. They want to convert us, make us like them, or kill us trying. I'm not going to lie to you; we know some of what goes on in the institutions. We're going to do whatever we can to try and stop that.”

I had never felt more relief in my life; I had found them, others like me, and everything I'd ever hoped or feared out of that discovery had come true.

“Take your time,” Eris said, her hand on my back reassuring me. “We're going to spend some time with you... teach you what we know, and help you if we can. You can't exactly go out there right now; sooner or later someone is going to recognize this face you're wearing. We'll help you sort something out, get you set up with a new disguise.”

#thesocietyofmultiples #multiplemademedia #Ronin Ellis #nanowrimo #multiplicity

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1ff · 8 years ago

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The Society of Multiples, chapter 1

Since I’m sure that everyone’s getting sick of awful media where we’re all evil killers, and craving some media where multiples are okay people, now’s probably a good time to share some of my NaNo novel.

I’ve been working on a second draft. Please note that this is still pretty rough. Also, if you read any of it, you are required to write at least two (2) words of response, preferably more. Constructive criticism welcome required.

(tw: not sure if I need to include some kind of content warning, but there’s some medical drama, death, and ‘faking multiplicity’ in this section, so there ya go)

-Ronin

ps reblog and make me famous. lol

Chapter 1

The quiet was painful. At any moment I thought someone might break it, and say something that would make things less awful. I knew there was nothing that we could say that would change the fact that she was dying, and we’d all said whatever we could think of to say.

Every living thing deserves to die, she'd told me, with that quirky smile struggling below the oxygen tube tucked up into her nose. It's cruel and awful and a relief all at the same time.

The three of them had worked it out among themselves. Macy had been the one to volunteer to be on front when they died, insisting that she wanted to be the first to know what happens after that moment. Jake and Naya had said their goodbyes already, so in the room at the last moments it had been our parents, Macy's friend, and Macy's minister who were there to witness and said goodbye.

The doctor checked her vital signs for the last time, looked up at us and nodded, and wrote down the time. I knew it was time for me to go. I took one last look down at them, my sisters and brother, once incarnate together in the body below me. I was halfway down the hall, beelining for the exit, before I felt any tears. Chapter 2

October ninth started like most days in my life. I slumped out of bed, set the coffee going, opened the curtains wide to take in the second-rate view of Lake Victor. The vibrant green summer hue of the lake had now faded to its usual heavy blue, and any day now would turn to white as the lake froze over. Between me and the lake stood the Grand Victor Hotel.

I'd dreamt about Macy again, about her final moments. It's been three years and thinking about her death still felt like a punch in the gut- or maybe more like a hollowing out, like someone had taken an ice cream scoop to my stomach. It was three years now that I'd been on the run. Three years since our parents had undeservedly lost all of their children on the same day. The guilt was still there, a mix of headache and heartache that had started to lighten over time but still had a long way to go before I could really justify or forgive myself.

I watched the clouds creep their way over the mountains as I sipped my coffee. Heavy, pale gray, like they might carry snow. It was that time. I'd been lucky enough to convince the hotel to keep me on through the winter months, but I wasn't looking forward to the weather. I looked over at the hotel- two minutes was not really a very long commute, but I had a feeling that in the days to come I wouldn't be venturing out much further. They said that -40 weather wasn't uncommon here.

Coffee cup empty, I shut the curtains and went about getting ready for the day. I looked around my little one-room accommodations. Clothes, jewellery, makeup- I'd laid out everything the day before. Today I would be putting on the act of being Eron. Eron was the trickier of the three to pull off, being the most outgoing and the most different from my own personality. But I had balanced everything carefully; in order to keep up the ruse I had to present a diverse front.

I changed into Eron's black shirt and blue jeans, carefully applied angular contours to my face in front of the mirror to simulate his narrow, crooked nose and deep-set eyes. I always felt I didn't quite have the knack for it like most people, but figured it was because to other people it mattered in a different way than it did for me. I was disguising; they were revealing truths. It would never carry the same emotional resonance. On the other hand, to me it was even more important. It was a disguise I wore for my survival.

I worked in the temporary black dye to my blonde hair and eyebrows, put on Eron's ring and plain ear stud. No coloured contacts needed today; Eron's gray eyes matched my natural colour. This was a relief, my eyes were sore from Jan's brown-eyed contacts yesterday. I did my usual careful self-study in the mirror; the face looking back looked familiar, authentic. I cleared my throat.

“She sells sea shells by the sea shore,” I said to the mirror in Eron's harsh, nasal, pitchy voice. “Ring around the rosie, four and twenty blackbirds, the cradle will drop. Asshole. Dipshit. Motherfucker.” The warm-up lines were a little different for each disguise, based on the personality's invented traits.

Staring into Eron's eyes in the mirror, I found my own eyes looking back for a moment. It caught me unaware; I spent so much time in disguise that sometimes I forget that there is someone else, a central, unchanging self trapped underneath it all. I knew what to do in times like this. I took a deep breath, looked myself in the eye, and gave myself a moment of self-pity. A moment of connectedness to the rare and disturbing truth underneath. I let it wash over me as I counted to five in my head, long enough to get it out of my system before it overcame me and tears ruined my makeup.

“Good,” I said in Eron's voice. “Now suck it up, jerk. Or we'll be late for work.”

#thesocietyofmultiples #ronin #multiplicity #nanowrimo

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1ff · 8 years ago

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The Society of Multiples, Chapter 6

Second draft of my story about an alternate world where almost everybody is multiple. If you read it, you agree to leave at least two words in response. Constructive criticism welcome. Reblog to rescue Pandas from extinction.

Catch up: (Chapter 1) (Chapter 2) (Chapter 3) (Chapter 4) (Chapter 5)

Let me know if you want to be tagged when I update so you don’t miss it ( @nevermindbinarity ) or search for the tag #thesocietyofmultiples

Chapter 6

A few days later I showed up again in a few news feeds online, and gave in to the temptation to read through them over a bagel and coffee in the morning at Emma’s apartment.

“What do you think would happen if I approached them?” I asked, looking up from my phone.

“Who? Amy?”

“Or the police, whoever.”

“You’d risk being revealed. Things would not go well for you.”

“Maybe. But I mean… we won’t be living in secrecy forever, will we? Someday singlets will have to reveal ourselves.”

“And then what? Get tossed into asylums and reprogrammed? Why would we do that?”

“Well, maybe it wouldn’t have to end that way.” I took a sip and thought for a moment. “Maybe some day, we might be accepted by them. Maybe they could learn to just… let us be. I mean, they think we’re dangerous but once we’re living among them and they can see that we’re harmless maybe they’ll get over it.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “That’s a fantasy. I’d like to think that the world could work like that. It seems to me that multiples are capable of all of this empathy, because they share their bodies with other minds and can feel and hear each other. They’re always exposed to viewpoints from different kinds of people, all within themselves. They don’t care about gender or skin colour or any of the things that make people unique. They don’t use any of it for superiority or judgement. But the one kind of person they can’t get their minds into is a singlet. We will alway be foreign to them. They’ll never understand us in the way they think that they need to, because they can never get directly into our lives.”

I sat with that for a while. Maybe she was right. Maybe that was why multiples of all kinds co-existed so well. Maybe that was why they had singled us out as the one and only kind of people who were unacceptable. At our next meeting, Martin was pale and trembling. He’d brought a stack of full-colour, glossy brochures. He set them down on Eris’ coffee table dramatically.

“Samette found me,” he whispered.

I picked up one of the brochures; It had a picture of a brick pathway through a beautiful park, leading to a large featureless white building. A woman in a knit sweatervest covered by a white doctor’s coat stood smiling on the path.

Bytown Institute for Dispersion Wholeness Therapy was the cover text.

“She said she wanted us all to have the same opportunity she’d had, to become... ‘normal.’” He swallowed hard. “I think she might have called us all out.”

“No,” Eris shook her head. “No, no. She wouldn’t. Even if they’d… gotten to her, made her think she’d been changed, she would never-”

“We can’t think of Samette as a person who still exists,” Nora said sharply. “If she’s giving us these then either they’ve actually succeeded-”

“-but you can’t just-” Kane interjected.

“-or they’ve succeeded in making her think she’s become multiple. Either way, whoever she used to be is either bottled up inside her or gone. I know this is harsh, trust me, I know, but….” Nora took a moment to compose herself. “We have to assume she’s called us all out.”

Everyone looked down or away, distressed.

“But what does it mean?” I asked. “I know it means she’s told them about us, but what happens next? I mean, they can’t just come for us and take us away. We’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I know,” Nora said patiently. “By law, nobody can just come and take us away when we’ve committed no crime, but trust me, they will anyways. And nobody will stop them. Everyone is too afraid of us.”

“We might all have to go into hiding,” Kane said somberly. “Well, except maybe Mem. Samette never heard of him.”

“We can’t be too careful,” Nora pointed out. “I know that the measures we sometimes take seem paranoid and over-the-top, but trust me, as someone who remembers what happened in this city in ‘86, these people will stop at nothing to find us and remove us from society.”

“What happened in 1986?” I asked.

“Raids. About a dozen of them. There used to be several groups like ours, meeting in private. There were even gathering places- bars, cafes, and clubs that were secretly meant for singlets. Places to meet and feel safe. Still nobody’s sure if it was the department of health, the police, the CIA, or what. All of a sudden they came, and there was little left of the community. They filled the asylums and got to work trying to ‘fix’ us all.”

“It won’t happen again,” Eris assured the group. “We’ll take action now. We’ll separate. We won’t see each other for a few weeks- try to move around if you can, adopt new fake identities. There’s still enough funds to scatter us and separate us and keep us safe for now. We’ll reconvene once this all blows over.”

So we stopped the meeting early, left one by one, and got to work. Even I made changes. I dropped the Jonas identity I’d been wearing to the meetings, changed my habits and the usual routes I took to get around. I didn’t see Emma for weeks, and it was heartbreaking. We hadn’t had much of a chance to say goodbye. We exchanged a few short, simple texts, and after each time I deleted all of our past conversations and contact information.

So it was surprising when she showed up at my apartment just as I was starting to worry that I would never see her again. I was in the process of putting my makeup on to get ready for Jeff’s shift at the diner. I opened the door wide and was about to reach out for her, but something about the way she was standing made me pause.

She stepped inside carefully, looking around. She was holding another one of those pamphlets.

“I’ve missed you so much,” I said, closing the door and leaning in for a kiss. She pulled away though.

“Please, it’s not… appropriate.”

“What’s wrong, Emma?”

“Mem, I’ve been thinking... “ she looked down at her pamphlet. “Maybe we should listen. Maybe we should find out if there’s something to this.”

I stepped back from her. “Emma, that’s not like you. What’s going on? What have they done to you?”

She shook her head. “They didn’t. They haven’t done anything. I just thought… it’s inevitable, they’re going to find us. Maybe it would be easier if we went together, and cooperated.”

“Emma please, don’t do this. We can be safe. They won’t find us. We’ll move together, adopt new identities, we’ll be okay.” As I said it, though, I knew I was too late.

“I’m sorry, Mem, I’ve made up my mind.” She headed for the door. “If you change yours- please come find me. I don’t want to do this alone.” She wiped away a tear.

“Emma, wait- Emma!” She was already out the door and down the hall. I started running after her, but outside the glass doors in the lobby of my apartment building I could see two figures- dressed in slacks and sweatervests, smiling and waiting for her. I backed away, snuck back into my apartment and locked the door. I didn’t sleep much that night, dwelling on what had happened. I’d been called out- there was no question there. Samette had never known me, but Emma had led them right to me. It was only a matter of time before they found me.

In my head I went through dozens of scenarios of how it could all play out, and in each of them it seemed inevitable that I was going to be found out. I could run, and keep running, but I didn’t want to live a life of watching everyone I care about being taken away.

I had an alternative though. I could stop running, and fight them head-on.

I turned on my phone and flipped through the news feeds, looking for my face. The story wasn’t buried too deep. The headline read;

“Talk Show Host Amy Offers $10,000 Reward To Get Eron Interview.”

#thesocietyofmultiples #multiplemademedia #multiplicity #nanowrimo #fiction #don't you care about pandas

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1ff · 8 years ago

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The Society of Multiples, Chapter 8

Catch up: (Chapter 1) (Chapter 2) (Chapter 3) (Chapter 4) (Chapter 5) (Chapter 6) (Chapter 7)

I think I’m technically supposed to have a polished version of the novel ready when I start passing it around to agents, and since I’ve already done that, it’s probably wise if I hurry the hell up and finish at least the second draft.

Huge thanks to everyone who’s been leaving comments and critique! It’s been incredibly helpful!

Let me know if you want to be tagged when I update so you don’t miss it ( @nevermindbinarity ) or search for the tag #thesocietyofmultiples

-Ronin

Chapter 8

The mood as we entered Jernigan shifted to relief and excitement. Jernigan itself was a large but laid-back city; obviously very rich, with a lot to do for entertainment and relaxation. It was midday when we got there, but evidence of the city’s busy nightlife were everywhere in neon signs and twenty-four hour locations.

We stopped at the hotel across from the studio first, checked in, and slept. All three of us were exhausted.

The next day, Cal and Macy accompanied me across the street to the studio. It was a huge building, very blocky and concrete. Inside, it was abuzz with activity; people rushing in every direction, clutching scripts and props, and escorting actors from place to place. It was clear that a lot happened here besides Amy’s show. We passed by one studio where it looked like they were filming some kind of science fiction show.

I insisted that either Cal or Macy stay with me. I’d grown to trust them over the last few days, and the last thing I wanted was to be misled at this stage of the game by someone trying to convince me that they were personnel when in fact they were here to take me away. I wasn't’ sure if my paranoia had grown beyond the reality of the situation yet, but both of them easily agreed.

I was taken past a desk where bored-looking secretary handed me a clipboard with a waiver on it, and led me down a hall to a small waiting room. Cal and Macy sat across from me; they referred to the space as a Green Room.

The waiver had few surprises; I’d always kept a skeptical attitude to talk shows in general, but at least Amy’s show seemed more respectable and real than most. She’d started her career as a journalist, and kept a degree of journalistic honesty, at least in image. And Julian, who ran the show behind the scenes, had obviously done a very good job. The production values were high. Besides the talk show, they were said to run a media empire that rivalled any of the big Hollywood studios.

Once I’d read the contract carefully and signed off on it, I was rushed back outside to film some stock footage. They had me walk down the street, sit next to a fountain, stare into the distance. An impatient man with a camera told me to act brooding, mysterious, and ponderous, but also natural, as though I was like that all the time. I must have pulled it off fairly well based on an entire lifetime of acting by necessity, because the shooting didn’t take long. The cameraman seemed annoyed to have Cal and Macy hovering around the whole time, but it was as if he didn’t have time to argue with them so he just tolerated their presence.

Back inside, I was seated in front of a makeup mirror. A cheery blonde artist rushed in smiling from ear to ear, and got to work on my face. Ey had a photo of Eron which ey clipped to the mirror, as well as a couple of other similair faces of actors and celebritities who vaguely resembled him. I did my best not to fidget. It was especially strange having someone else put that face on me; I felt uncomfortable enough doing it myself.

Ey did a great job, though- far better than I’d ever done. Somehow ey had captured his look perfectly, even better than my best attempts. I nodded in appreciation. Ey shook my hand, made some kind of awkward compliment or appreciation about my heroism, and my patience in the makeup chair, or something- by this point I was so full of anxiety that I was having trouble focusing. I thanked em and got ushered back to the green room, where a costumer was waiting with a suit. I was skeptical at first, but again they’d managed to capture something about Eron that surprised me. The suit was black, with a dark gray shirt, and no tie.

It seemed strange; heroes rarely wore black in film or television, but the nation apparently saw Eron as a moody, dark anti-hero. They’d created an image of him that wasn’t entirely wrong, but bolstered by a lie they didn’t expect. I was going to go out on the stage in this? Millions would be watching me. Millions would hear what I had to say, and perhaps fittingly- I would be presented as an antihero.

For a moment I contemplated asking for a different outfit, since this would not be the impression I wanted the audience to walk away with. But I shrugged and put the suit on; I had to maintain the lie of my life a little longer. The costumer had to swap out a different jacket due to sleeves too short, but overall the suit fit me well and was flattering. Macy nodded and smiled when I paused in front of the mirror to admire it.

The secretary poked her head in the door. “Eron, Amy wants to have a brief pre-interview with you.”

Macy and Cal walked with me towards the door, but the secretary just gave us an exasperated look. “Alone. Obviously.”

I contemplated my options for a moment. “Can they wait outside the room? They need to stay near. Amy appointed them.”

She shrugged. “Sure, if you want. This way.”

She led us through the maze-like corridors to another small office, and down the hall from there to a closed door.

“We’ll wait here,” Cal assured me. “You’re safe with Amy.”

I took a deep breath and let the secretary usher me in. She put on a false smile as she introduced me to Amy, then left.

Amy was shorter than I’d expected, which is what everybody seems to say about celebrities when they meet face-to-face. She was still imposing, though, but her mannerisms were also gracious and welcoming. She shook my hand, then we sat on a comfortable couch.

“I’m glad to finally meet you, Eron. Before we went out, I wanted to stop and express my gratitude for coming all this way for this interview.”

“I’m not really sure what to say. I’m kind of overwhelmed. I’m not sure why there’s all this attention on me after such a small incident.”

She smiled, offered me a coffee from the urn on the table. I nodded. “Well, it goes beyond that incident,” she explained, “and the incident itself was strange enough. Gun violence, sexual predation, unexpected heroism, all of that got people talking. But then there’s you.”

I added cream and sugar to my cup of coffee, and sipped it gently. “I’m not that exciting.”

“You really are, though. You’ve got the whole world talking. This random stranger barges into a hostile situation, defuses it, then runs off and completely disappears from the face of the planet. Did you know I had four different teams of private detectives try to track you down?”

My head was spinning. The anxiety was building fast; I felt like I was going to vomit. How on earth was I going to get out on that stage and talk about all of this?

“That seems excessive,” I answered carefully.

She laughed. “Maybe. But everything they found just made me more and more curious. You’re a bit of an enigma. I have to be careful- I don’t want you to say too much before we go out on stage. We need to have natural reactions and easy banter, it can’t seem rehearsed. But I’m honestly looking forward to this interview more than most, I’ll admit it.”

I felt tongue-tied. I really didn’t want to go out on stage like this, shaking and whimpering and barely able to speak. I couldn’t get my voice to get along with my brain, so I just took another sip.

“Don’t worry, you’re going to do great. Everyone gets jitters before the stage. Once we’re out there, you’ll be surprised at how easy it all is. And trust me, everyone is going to want to hear what you have to say. Especially-” she paused, and caught my eye- “especially if you’re going to say what I’m hoping you’re going to say.”

There was a long moment when our eyes locked. I think my jaw must have dropped, but she just smiled again, that easy comfortable smile that just naturally relaxes whoever she points it at. And then she winked.

“I also wanted to let you know- Julian will be around. The two of us discuss things internally during shooting- he needs to be around and have his say. He’ll keep out of the way for the most part, so don’t worry about it. I just wanted to let you know for the sake of honesty and disclosure.”

My eyes went wide, and she caught the expression. “Yes, we co-front. Not a lot of people do, or even can, but it might have something to do with being dual. We spend a lot of time together. I’d appreciate if you didn’t make that public knowledge; people get uncomfortable at things like that. They think there’s only certain proper ways to be. I figured I could trust you, though.”

I nodded. “Of course. Your secret’s safe with me.”

I was ushered back again to the Green Room, where a technician fitted me with a lapel mike. It was surprisingly small, but apparently very high-fidelity.

I was the only guest in the Green Room, along with Cal and Macy, but they still brought in a large platter of cheese and crackers. I nibbled nervously. I felt that if I had too many it would just send my stomach into even more convulsions.

Finally, everything was in place, and I was led to the stage. Cal and Macy promised to stay just back-stage; before I went out, I shook their hands and thanked them for all they’d done. I hoped that when all was said and done, they’d still be there, ready to help escort me away, but I knew I could expect no promises.

I heard Amy talking, winding up a brief welcome and instructions to the crowd, who were being prepped to react with positivity and thoughtfulness. I marvelled at how carefully the whole production was put together to create a certain mood. Amy really had a way of working the audience.

Amy sat and began the show’s introduction; a brief description of Eron and the incident, of Eron going into hiding, of her pulling her resources to find him. I saw on a monitor screen various photos of Eron and Lake Victor being shown as a backdrop to her explanation.

A technician pointed at me, gestured for me to go on-stage.

All of a sudden, all of the jitters and the anxiety washed away. I looked out at the audience, at the brightly lit stage, at Amy herself poised so perfectly in one of the two yellow armchairs on stage- and all of a sudden it all changed. I suddenly knew I could do what I had come here to do. My heart slowed down to a relaxed pace, my hands stopped shaking. Nothing that stood in the way was important anymore.

I walked out on stage with determination and a soft smile. The audience applauded. Amy stood and shook my hand, catching my eye again with a knowing look. We sat, and I tried to make myself comfortable without slouching.

After the applause died down, Amy turned to me. “You’ve come a long way to be with us today. Whereabouts are you living now.”

“I’ve been in River City. I’ve lived there since I left Lake Victor.”

“And how have things been for you? Do you get recognized on the street a lot?”

“No, not really. I’ve actually been laying low ever since the incident.”

She nodded. “It’s been pretty clear that you wanted to avoid attention. Before we get deeper into that though, I was hoping you would tell us more about the event itself. We haven’t really heard it from your perspective.”

“Okay. I don’t know that I have much to add. I was working in the hotel kitchen in Lake Victor when I noticed one of the chefs acting strangely-”

“That’d be Jace?”

I nodded.

“What did he do?”

“Well, he switched. A public switch, stress-induced. His headmate Rhonda took front. Supposedly.”

“But you recognized that something seemed wrong.”

“Yes.”

“How did you know?”

I shrugged. “I can’t really say that it was anything in particular. I’ve just always studied people very closely, I guess. I could see that something was off. The switch was fake.”

“Did you have any inkling as to why he would fake the switch?”

“Not at the time. It seemed like he was trying to get out of work, but that’s a pretty drastic way to do it.”

“But effective.”

“Yes, definitely. Everybody was kind of embarrassed. He got out of there in a hurry.”

“And you followed?”

“My shift was almost over, I was planning on going for a hike. I noticed Jace leave on one of the trails, so I decided to follow. Out of curiosity.”

“What happened then?”

“Well, I wasn’t following too intently, so I lost sight of him for a bit, but then I saw him on a ledge further down the hill, and I could see that he had a gun. He was in a little hiding spot above the main path, and I realized that he was waiting for someone to come by and that he was going to shoot them.”

“What did that feel like, in that moment? Realizing you were seeing someone about to commit a violent act?”

“Shocking. Very shocking. It’s just not something you see a lot of. And it was so sneaky, the way he was hiding… it gave me chills. It felt so surreal.”

She nodded. “Go on.”

“So then I saw one of the hotel waitresses coming around the corner with a young man, and I realized that one of them had to be the target. So I decided to act before Jace got a chance to.”

“But in doing so, you must have realized that you were putting yourself in a lot of danger?”

“Yeah. I knew. But I had an advantage on him. He didn’t even know I was there; I was able to get the drop on him before he had a chance to react. Besides, I couldn’t just stand there and watch. I had to do something.”

“A lot of people are considering that a very heroic act. Not everybody would do what you did in that situation.”

“Maybe not. I don’t know. I can’t imagine doing anything differently. I think I was mostly in the right place at the right time.”

“Yes, but how you got to be at that place and time isn’t coincidence either. You saw something that nobody else could see.”

“I guess.”

“So, after all of that was said and done, you disarmed him, and then what happened?”

“I handed the gun over to the waitress’ headmate, who used it to subdue Jace until the police could arrive.”

“And by the time the police came, you were long gone.”

“Yes. I felt I had to get out of there.”

“And that’s the big question that’s been on everybody’s minds. So let’s get down to it; can you share with us why you felt it was necessary to leave?”

It was amazing how much she could communicate with a glance; comfort, strength, encouragement. She shifted forward on her chair, ready to take in my answer.

I looked out at the audience, glanced momentarily at the camera, and came back to look at her.

“My whole life I’ve tried to lay low, stay unnoticed. I’m different from most people. A lot of people would consider me… unwanted. I left because I knew that if people found out about me, I could be in personal danger.”

“What is it about you that makes you feel that people would react badly to you?” I could tell by the even, careful way she asked, that she knew. There was no question now.

I took a deep breath. Here it was.

“I’m a singlet,” I said finally. It was over now; anything that came before this moment in my life would be fundamentally different from anything that happened after.

The audience murmured; the cameramen foundered with their equipment. I could hear gasps of surprise and revulsion and disgust. Through it all, Amy remained stoic, unfazed.

“You realize that by telling the world about this now, you’re putting yourself at risk all over again.”

“I know. I know.” I struggled to keep my voice calm. “I’m just… tired of living in hiding. Tired of disguising myself, of lying just to fit in and feel safe. And for no good reason! There’s no reason why we should be feared. We really are just like everybody else- we’re not the monsters that everyone believes we are.”

She nodded. “I think a lot of people are going to be surprised that, in this whole story, it wasn’t the man with the gun who was the singlet, it was the man who stepped in and stopped him. It’s going to make a lot of people uncomfortable that the singlet was the hero instead of the villain.”

“Yes. And I worried that nobody would understand that. I worried that the whole story would turn inside-out, that somehow I would be blamed. Because people think that we have no moral compass, no ability to empathize. They think we’re cold and cruel and twisted, that we do horrible things to animals and children- it’s all so ridiculous. I know that things will get twisted around now, that somebody will invent a new story out of all of this, that turns my motives upside-down and portrays me as equally evil. But I wanted to give people the chance to consider that-” I had to pause, my voice was breaking up now. “-to consider that we’re... okay. That we should be considered equals, that we’re safe and normal and just like everybody else.” I was losing composure, but I had to finish. I had to raise my voice a little as the unsettled crowd was getting louder. “Nobody has ever really heard about our lives from our own perspectives before. I’m sure half of the world doesn’t even know we exist. But we’re out there, and there’s so many more of us than people suspect, and we’re human beings. We’re all around you; friends, siblings, children. I want everybody to know that, even if they don’t know it yet, they already know a singlet. There’s somebody in their lives that they consider a good person, or a friend, or someone they love. And that they should still love that person even if they know.”

I took a deep breath. The sound of the crowd was growing now. The audience was no longer an audience, now they were becoming active. People were fidgeting with their phones, using them to record and make calls and contact people. The waivers they’d signed on their way in were no longer important; something more important than the show was going on. It might not be much longer before the audience became a full-on mob; there were many people visibly upset, some of them turning angry.

“I think that’s about all we’ll have time for,” Amy said calmly.

#thesocietyofmultiples #Ronin Ellis #nanowrimo #fiction #speculative fiction #multiplicity #multiplemademedia

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1ff · 8 years ago

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the Society of Multiples, author's shower thought

My mind just got blown... a reader was talking to me about Mem and was under the impression that Mem isn't a guy. I intentionally had multi-gendered systems, genderqueer, and trans characters, and never told the reader what was in anybody's pants because NOYFB. But I don't think the actual text says what Mem's sex or gender is. It only describes the genders of the fake identities, and the ones described are all male.

I'm now intentionally writing Mem as ambiguous, and leaving it up to the reader. After all, in the culture described in the book, it wouldn't matter to anyone, and it doesn't matter to the story.

If anyone out there catches me at a mistake in this, please point it out.

#gender #storytelling #thesocietyofmultiples

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1ff · 8 years ago

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Just submitted The Society of Multiples to an agent for consideration. Nerves: jangled. FUCKIN WOOT

-Ronin

#thesocietyofmultiples

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1ff · 8 years ago

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The Society of Multiples, Chapter 7

Catch up: (Chapter 1) (Chapter 2) (Chapter 3) (Chapter 4) (Chapter 5) (Chapter 6)

Two chapters in one day? Why the hell not.

Let me know if you want to be tagged when I update so you don’t miss it ( @nevermindbinarity ) or search for the tag #thesocietyofmultiples

Chapter 7

Four long telephone calls to Shikakwa later, I had a guarantee of the reward and an taped television interview half a continent away. I didn’t care that much about the reward, because at the moment I wasn’t actually thinking that far ahead. The resources to do what I wanted- to either go back into hiding, or try to live in the open, would be useful. At that point in time though, everything centred around the interview itself.

I had negotiated a long list of specific demands, and in return proved my identity well enough to pass their scrutiny. I wanted to make sure that everything went off without a hitch.

I managed to find one remaining outfit and enough makeup of the right colours to resurrect my previous fake headmate. I gave myself a thorough examination in the mirror, and nodded approvingly. I’d managed to reconstruct Eron fairly decently from memory.

I was picked up that afternoon in a plain car driven by two people in completely average clothing, exactly as I’d specified. As I slipped into the back seat, the woman leaned over and shook my hand. “You must be Eron. I’m Macy, this is Cal. We’re so glad to have finally found you.”

I nodded quietly. “Thanks for picking me up.”

She smiled. “Is this to your satisfaction? I have to confess I’m very curious to know why all this secrecy. But I’m guessing we’ll all have to wait for your interview with Amy.”

I nodded. “Mum’s the word.”

“Well, that’s fine, you’re the star of this show. You call the shots.”

Cal started driving towards the highway to take us south. “We have hotel reservations just as you requested. Everything is all set up.” He had a very professional, deep, even voice. I got the impression that the t-shirt and jeans I’d insisted they wear were completely out of character for him.

“Good,” I nodded. “We won’t be showing up. We’ll be staying at all different hotels from what I listed, no reservations, all walk-ins.”

Cal chuckled. “I figured. I don’t know what you’ve got going on but this is going to be one hell of a trip.”

I watched out the window as we left River City behind- probably for the last time, for me. After this, there was no telling what would happen. With the group dissolved and deep in hiding, and Emma gone to whatever personal hell she’d chosen for herself, I didn’t have much left for me here.

“Tell me about Amy,” I asked, trying to sound like I was idly making conversation.

“She’s amazing,” Macy glowed. “Every bit as generous and kind and smart as she seems on TV.”

“And saavy,” Cal added. “Doesn’t take nonsense from anyone.”

“Her and Julian are a perfect power-couple for headmates,” Macy added. “Between the two of them they run a media empire nobody can touch.”

“Good.” Hopefully that untouchability can be passed on for a short period. Then something occurred to me. “Amy and Julian- is it just the two of them? A dual system?”

“That’s right. Weird, I know. In some cultures apparently it’s considered a kind of blessing.”

I wondered if that logic would make me doubly blessed, or half. In a life that sometimes feels like a curse, neither made sense to me.

I wondered if Amy and Julian would empathize with me on any level for being singular. There would be so many ways in which we would be similar, but then again, many ways in which we would be worlds apart.

I stared out the window as we went. It rarely really occurred to me how lonely being alone is, since I’d been so alone my entire life. Usually it confused me instead how they could handle never being alone. Even the way they used that word meant something different. They even had a special word for being not just physically but mentally alone: solity. They used it like a curse.

The drive was long. It would have been far quicker to fly, but without registration, I had no identification, and no passport. Crossing the border was tricky enough by road.

I watched my travelling companions over the next few days rotate headmates a few times, and new faces and identities introduced themselves to me in the usual custom.

Personally, I was done with the performance of it. I introduced myself as Eron each time, never bothering to fake a switch. Other than Eron’s particular shades, I hadn’t really packed any makeup or clothing to pull it off anyways. If they noticed, they never said anything.

I made requests as we went, some of them strange but serving an important purpose, but some of them just random. I insisted that each hotel we stopped at had a swimming pool, which was mainly so that I could sneak down there at night and just float on my back, experiencing the weightlessness and peace with my eyes shut. Usually I would get the swimming pool to myself; it was odd that even now, being one of the most alone people on the planet, I was craving even more solitude.

We took detours. Some of them had no real purpose, but some of them were to avoid larger cities and places where I’d heard of particularly strong anti-singlet sentiment.

At the border, of course, we were detained for four solid hours. The car was stripped off all our clothes and belongings, tossed out on the dusty parking lot. I sat patiently, explaining over and over and over that I not only didn’t have a passport, but no ID whatsoever. Technically, nobody was really required to have ID, but most people carried around a wallet or three swollen with cards that bore several faces and biographies along with the MRI proof to show that each was legitimate and registered.

And so I sat, expressionless, bored, ready for all of it, while people in uniforms interrogated me with the same questions over and over again. My only real plan was to just wait it all out; technically, by law, they couldn’t stop me from crossing. In the back of my head though, I remembered what Nora had said about the difference between what was legal, and what happened in real life.

It didn’t last that long though. I watched through a cracked door as Macy made furious call after call, and soon the entire office seemed to be saturated with ringing phones. People from Amy’s formidable forces of lawyers and interns and assistants were threatening, admonishing, and even diplomatically convincing everyone they could get a hold of that it was in their best interest to send us on our way. Finally they just let us go, exasperated.

As we drove south, I looked back at the border station in awe.

“When Amy’s determined to get something done, it gets done,” Cal said simply.

Another late night, another float in the pool. There was a couple in the hot tub, but they were keeping to themselves, and as my ears bobbed up and down across the waterline I heard only brief snippets of their conversation.

I felt an ache, though. Knowing that Emma had not only left me, but she had handed herself over willingly to suffering under whatever brutal techniques they were using to try and split up her mind and make her ‘normal.’ Unless I tried really hard to block them out, sometimes I would get glimpses in my imagination of her tied down to a bed with a block of wood in her mouth, her eyes rolling back and her whole body seizing as they shocked her with electricity...

I stopped myself again, then took a few deep breaths and let it all wash over me. I gave in to the anguish and anger and despair for a few moments, let it wash over me, and then pulled myself back from the brink.

My tears washed away into the water of the pool, and the chlorine disguised my bloodshot eyes.

As I rinsed off and changed into my dry clothes, I noticed that the couple was also leaving the hot tub. They seemed innocent enough- both handsome, tall men, one with dark hair a little longer than typical, the other a short-buzzed ginger. They laughed and made small talk about nothing really- something about how their trip was going, how the restaurant was last night.

But something didn’t seem right, intuitively. They seemed to be rushing a bit to catch up with me. I noticed the dark-haired one glance over at me a few times. Did he recognize me, or was he checking me out, or what? I’d worn only minimal waterproof makeup.

Or maybe- and I wondered if I was just being paranoid here, but- what if he was looking for me? What if Emma had actually sold me out, either under the belief that she knew what’s better for me, or under duress?

I moved calmly, trying to act normal, and beelined for the elevator. They were right behind me- they caught the door just as it was closing. I smiled uncomfortably and moved aside for them. They didn’t even seem to glance at the panel, just let the elevator doors close and continue their inane and practiced-sounding conversation.

At my floor they got off first, and walked ahead of me- but not too far ahead of me. I slowed down, they slowed down. They were pacing themselves to keep with the footsteps they could hear behind them.

I walked right past my room, gave no indication. Instead I went almost to the end of the hallway, then turned to a random door and pretended to be having trouble with my key card. I watched out of the corner of my eye as they turned to look, then kept walking to the end of the hall to inexplicably enter the stairwell as though suddenly realizing they’d gotten off at the wrong floor.

I backtracked carefully once I knew they were gone, and knocked on Cal and Macy’s door.

Macy answered the door in a t-shirt and jogging pants, obviously getting ready for bed. “Eron? Everything okay?”

“No,” I said quietly and urgently. “Pack up. Right away. Meet me in the parking lot in five minutes.”

She looked at me, hesitated only a moment, then turned around to get Cal. “See you in five,” she said over her shoulder.

In less than five minutes, Cal and Macy rushed out, suitcases in arms, a confused front desk clerk behind them. We tossed our luggage haphazardly into the car and piled in. Macy hit the gas in such a hurry that the tires squealed. I flinched; we were being too obvious, but it was a toss-up right now whether being sneaky or being fast was a better approach.

It was dark now, and it was easy to catch the headlights following us, but too hard to see the faces of the people in the car. I watched anxiously as they caught up to us, then put distance between us.

“I think we’re being followed,” I warned Macy anxiously.

Cal nodded in the passenger seat. He was fiddling with something; I heard metal sliding against meal. I craned my neck to see him loading a revolver.

My jaw dropped. This was only the second gun I’d ever seen in my life. How on earth had he gotten hold of one? Why did he have it? Was I being protected to the point that Amy’s people had gone to the lengths of buying and registering a gun? Where had he been stowing it this entire time?

The weight of the situation hit me suddenly. I’d asked for fake hotel reservations and circuitous detours in part because I was worried that Emma had turned me in, and in part to indicate that if Amy was serious she’d have to go to a lot of trouble to get me into her studio. I wasn’t sure when we set out how much danger I was in, and felt like I was overdoing the paranoia. Now all of a sudden all of that paranoia was collapsing in on itself. We were actually being followed by somebody, and we didn’t know why. Suddenly I felt like I’d been playing a game to satisfy my ego, and now things were turning serious.

Macy turned down a busy street, intentionally going off-track from the route to the highway. The car turned to follow. She made a sudden U-turn, from the wrong lane, without signalling. I watched as the following car kept going, but made a quick U-turn at the next lights and sped up to catch up with us again.

“Definitely being followed,” Cal mumbled. “We need to loose them.”

Macy nodded grimly. She looked out ahead of us and turned on the car GPS.

“I’m going to try another maneuver. Hold on tight.” She moved into the left-turn lane as we pulled up to another set of lights.

We waited at the red light, signal light blinking, as the intersection filled up with vehicles. The car that was following us pulled up slowly behind us, trying to keep their distance without being too obvious. In the light from the intersection though, I could just make out the two faces of the men who’d been following me earlier. It was definitely them. I ducked down to avoid being seen.

“It’s the men from the pool?” Cal asked, adjusting the mirror in his visor to get a look.

“Definitely.”

“Do you recognize them?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never seen them before tonight.”

The light turned green, and Macy hit the gas before the people in the cars across from us could react. She slipped through the gap just before it was closed up by the people going straight through the intersection. I heard tires screech behind us, a horn wailing. I looked out to see our followers stuck at the intersection, having tried to slip in behind us but only ending up getting snarled in traffic.

Cal smiled. “Macy, that was good.”

She nodded, smirking just a little. “We’re not out of the woods yet. But I’ve got us a route to a different interstate leading east out of the city. That work for you, Eron?”

I nodded. “Any way you can get us out of here works for me.”

We took a few more unexpected turns- some of them didn’t really seem to lead anywhere, but Macy was obviously winding her way through a plan based on the GPS device that eventually led us to the interstate. I was confident in her plan; for anyone who didn’t know this city, the path would not have made sense and they wouldn’t have known which route we left by.

Cal breathed a sigh of relief, stowed his gun. “I haven’t seen them since that left-hand turn you took. I think we shook them.”

Macy nodded, smiling. She made a deep exhale. “That was pretty fun. I’m not gonna lie.”

Cal turned to look at me. “You alright?”

I nodded. “Thank you. I can’t believe you did all that. And got away with it.”

“That’s why Amy sent us,” Macy said with a wink.

Cal returned to his calm, serious, professional mode. “Listen, it’s absolutely none of our business- we can’t really ask you about what’s going on. I know that. I’ll admit I’m curious, but you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, and you’re probably wise to say as little as possible. But things are escalating now. If you can tell me anything- anything you’re comfortable with- well, it would potentially be useful to know who’s following us and why.”

I nodded slowly. “To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. I was afraid that someone was looking for me, but I didn’t expect them to be this determined. I’m amazed they managed to catch up with us this far down the road.”

“Do you know whether they intend to catch you, or harm you?”

“Both,” I said carefully. “But I’m pretty sure they want me alive.”

Cal nodded. “I think… this is going to be a very interesting episode of Amy’s show.”

“Julian’s going to love what it’ll do for the ratings,” Macy added with a smirk.

I leaned back in my seat, checked my watch. It was already past 1 AM; odds were we wouldn’t stop for a hotel for a few hours. I tried to make myself comfortable on the back seat, but didn’t really expect to get any sleep after all that happened.

The adrenaline wore off hard, though. Before I knew it, I was dozing off.

I resurfaced on the edge of sleep a little later though, when I heard voices.

“You’ve got to admit it’s strange- we’ve been with him almost 24 hours a day, we haven’t seen-”

“Sssh. Careful, Macy.”

“Don’t worry about it- he’s passed out pretty hard back there.”

I felt my consciousness drift up and down across the threshold of waking; I wasn’t sure at first if the conversation I was overhearing was a dream or something happening around me.

“Look, I’m just saying- it can’t be him, on front all the time. We haven’t seen him switch, at all. You ever see someone front that long?”

“Yeah. College. Exam times. It happens.”

“You’ve got to admit, it’s strange. There’s something about him that’s not normal.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I know we’re not supposed to speculate, but-”

“-but you’re wondering the same thing I’m wondering.”

“About who he is. What he is-”

“-and who’s following him-”

“-and whether he’s safe.”

I struggled to hear more, but felt myself fading away again.

I woke as the car pulled into the parking lot. The sun was out; my watch told me it was eleven, and I had to do a double-take, momentarily confused between AM and PM. I had slept, but not well. Macy and Cal looked exhausted and harried; they’d been ready to drift off to sleep hours ago, when we’d left in a hurry.

Macy and Cal slept, and I promised not to leave the hotel grounds without one of them. I wanted to go down to the pool to float and process everything, but in the middle of the day it would be full of people, and I felt nervous now being alone.

The next two days, we pushed even harder to get there faster. The deviation east, and our various detours, had cost us time; now, we were trying to get to Jernigan as fast as possible. If we’d been filming at the head office in Shikakwa, we’d have made it by now, but Amy’s show was filming furthur down south and she’d insisted we meet her there. Macy and Cal drove in shifts; I volunteered, but they insisted I keep my head down and stay safe.

As we drove south, I lost a layers of clothe. River City had been heading into winter when we left; Jernigan was practically tropical. I was not used to weather this warm or humid, especially this time of year.

Each state border we crossed brought a new sense of relief; further from the land I left behind, and further from whoever was following me. It still boggled my mind that someone would be so offended by my state of solity that they would be following me this far to try and retrieve me and take me home for their forced therapy. Was being alone in my head so dangerous to the world that I had to be tracked across federal borders by spies? I kept wondering what was underneath it all; obviously this was not all just ‘for my own good’ in some self-justifying therapeutic sense. There had to be some kind of agenda underneath it all, but it was difficult to figure out what.

I knew they saw us as dangerous, heartless, cold, cruel. They accused us of murder, pedophelia, abuse, manipulation. But even if they knew I was singlet, I’d never done anything wrong- they couldn’t prove anything, they had no evidence, they surely had no warrant- was being singlet enough on it’s own to justify following me so far just to take me home and subject me to their treatments?

There had to be more to it.

#thesocietyofmultiples #multiplemademedia #puppy haters #fiction #nanowrimo

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1ff · 8 years ago

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The Society of Multiples, Chapter 2

Again, this is only a second draft, and still pretty rough. I’m putting this out there for constructive criticism. By reading, you agree to say a a minimum of 2 words in response.

(tw: a gun? that’s about it. some talk about the stigma that singlets are deranged, violent murderers)

-Ronin

Chapter 1 here

PS (Thanks to @arashi-of-ota for pointing out an error in a plot point, which I have fixed in the text below.)

Chapter 2 (cont)

Work was uneventful. There was a group booking in the main banquet hall, so lots of dishes to clean. The steam of the huge industrial dishwasher distorted my makeup, requiring reapplication a couple of times. Lunch was short and eaten alone, then back to the steam.

Right after lunch, as I was getting things sorted out in the dish pit, I looked across the kitchen and caught something unusual. Jace, one of the line cooks, had a strange dazed look about him. He was staring off into the distance, as if there was nobody home.

And then, like the click of a lightswitch, it wasn’t Jace. I’d never met Rhonda, only ever heard about her in passing, but intuitively I knew exactly who I was looking at. She looked confused for a moment, then mortified.

And then, like the click of a lightswitch, Jace seemed to disappear. I’d never met Rhonda, only ever heard about her in passing, but I knew exactly who I was supposed to be looking at. She looked confused for a moment, then mortified. My heart seemed to start beating in double-time. Something wasn’t right here; this was a ruse.

Then she was surrounded by a small group of concerned co-workers, and I didn’t see much of what happened after that. She was calmly and quietly escorted out.

I overheard, as I was loading up the next tray of silverware, that a mixture of stress and stomachache led to an embarrassing unplanned switch. Rhonda, his bureaucrat headmate who usually worked the audit offices upstairs, had gone home, embarassed. Nobody commented much on it, just gave quiet sympathy and understanding as they packed up Jace’s knives and stored them away for him.

For me, though, it was a very familiar and startling moment. I'd watched people closely all my life, trying to figure out the exact ways they thought and acted in order to emulate a normal life as closely as I could. I would never pass a dMRI scan, but I'd gotten very good at acting, and observing others. I was pretty sure that Jace hadn't actually just switched to Rhonda. The entire thing was all an act.

I'd faked it once or twice myself, when I felt I needed to. I was always looking for ways to throw people off the trail I imagined they were following, to provide further proof that I'm like everyone else. A fake public switch isn't really easy to pull off, so I only did it rarely. Usually I figured that the risk of drawing attention and being detected wasn’t worth it.

When work ended at 3pm, I slunked down to the cafeteria to join Eron's friends for dinner. Neither Eron, Jan, nor Tigh could really be said to have actual friends; you can't genuinely befriend someone who doesn't exist, and I was too far removed from people to develop any direct human connections.

On the way I mentally rehearsed Eron's food preferences. Greasy, warm comfort food was the usual. The lasagne the cafeteria was serving was an easy choice.

I laughed Eron's laugh with it’s slightly mean edge, made small talk in Eron's blunt style, struggled with his more outgoing and social nature. I pushed myself to stay longer than comfortable, finally bowed out to go for a solo hike. On my way to the door I was surprised to see Jace on his way out. If the switch had been real, Rhonda would have gone off to a switchroom to change clothes and makeup. But I could tell easily by his angry slumped posture and quick pace that this was definitely Jace, not Rhonda. He’d changed out of his chef costume, but nothing else was different.

I noticed Jace was heading out for the mountain paths; specifically, towards one of my favorites that led up to Morraine Lake and then to Mount Big Beehive. Since I was heading out for a hike myself anyways, I decided to go in the same direction. Maybe I'd catch up to him, and have a chance to carefully ask about what I'd noticed- maybe, I even dared to wonder, Jace/Rhonda/etc. weren't actually normal; maybe they were singlet like me. I'd only ever encountered one other singlet, and only in passing, as neither of us had wanted to bring attention to ourselves.

I lost track of Jace soon, though. He must have taken another fork in the path at some point. That was alright, though; my real purpose in being out here was to have some time to myself.

It was a relief to be alone in the woods. I kept to the lesser-used paths that wound through the mountains, so I could have time to myself. I let my guard down, just a bit, in case I was unknowingly being watched. Muscles in my face relaxed, the tightness in my throat eased.

I'd been walking for at least twenty minutes, far from the hotel and the community of workers that lived in the housing behind it. I'd even ventured off-trail, swiping spiderwebs from my face and taking care of where I stepped among rocks and burrows. There had been some snow earlier in the week, which was now softening and melting off the branches of trees with occasional sloughing noises.

I heard a snap of a broken branch, and froze- that one definitely wasn’t from the weight of snow. I turned my gaze slowly to the left, expecting to see some large wildlife like a moose or deer. Instead, I saw someone crouching about thirty feet away. It was Jace. I recognized his plain brown jacket, blending in to the trees. I might not have spotted him if I hadn't heard him.

And it was definitely Jace. I was confused; why was he off-trail? I didn't know anyone besides me who'd wander this far out.

Also, why was he crouching? I realized quickly that something strange was going on, and I crouched too to avoid being seen. I moved carefully, slowly back into thicker growth and out of sight. Jace continued creeping slowly along, eyes fixated further downhill. He was watching, looking for something.

And then there she was- one of the servers from the banquet division. She was walking along with a taller man, smiling. I could tell from here by their giggling voices and body language that this was some kind of date. Looking back at Jace, I could see what he thought of this. I smirked; I was witnessing a strange little moment of drama. Weird to be in the right place at the right time to catch the subtleties of this event. Close enough to catch every wrinkled brow, smile, fidget of anxiety.

Doesn't look very good for Jace though. What kind of creep sneaks around like this? What was his situation with them, anyways?

I caught movement, and watched as Jace reached around to his back pocket and pulled out a black handgun. I didn't know enough of guns to know one from another, but I could tell he wasn't here to be hunting. Where the hell could he have gotten a gun? I watched, frozen, as he raised it to aim at the unsuspecting couple. Everything suddenly felt surreal, disjointed, like I was watching a movie.

I shook myself out of the fugue. I looked around at my feet, found a sizeable rock, and quickly threw it in Jace's direction.

I missed, but distracted Jace and got him facing directly away from me. The sound startled the couple on the path, and they stopped and looked around.

Without thinking I found myself hurtling across the slope toward where Jace was hiding. He didn't notice me at first- he was too intent on the waitress. He had his gun raised again.

Already knowing I was about to fall and land hard and awkwardly, I lunged directly at Jace. I'm not sure if he was already pulling the trigger, or if the contact or surprise caused his finger to pull the trigger. I had no idea what direction the bullet went. Either way, the gun was flying into the leaves and thorny branches of a bush. Jace was momentarily stunned, then I saw him struggling to get back to his feet, his face red and furious.

Instead of trying to get to my feet, I pushed off with my legs and dove towards the gun. Adrenaline kept me from feeling the thorns as I reached out and grabbed it; I gripped it firmly by the handle and brought it to bear on Jace.

Other than in a movie or two, I'd never seen anyone actually handle a gun. I had no idea if I was even holding it properly. Either way, I could see by Jace's expression that he wasn't about to fight about it.

“Get on your knees,” I stammered. My throat was dry and my voice whispery. I was breathing heavily. “And get your hands on top of your head.”

He slowly dropped back down, and put his hands on his head. “This isn't what it looks like,” he said in a strangely calm voice.

I could see the waitress shaking herself, visibly changing in posture and mannerism. She was switching- something that I'd only seen about half a dozen times in my life. Normally a very private moment, but now she was responding to a moment of crisis. Seeing it happen now made me realize even more strongly that Jace had faked his switch earlier.

“Eron. That's your name, right?” it was a very masculine voice. He pushed the waitress’s long hair out of his face in annoyance. I felt myself flushing a little in empathetic embarrassment for whoever this was, called upon to handle this situation in his headmate's makeup and clothing, interrupting her romantic walk.

“I'm-” I stopped myself. I realized in the heat of the moment I'd dropped my act; I was speaking in my natural voice. I quickly returned to Eron's facial and bodily posture. Even at this moment I was paranoid that I would be spotted; but obviously there were more immediate distractions.

I stopped before I confirmed Eron's identity. Part of living my life in peace meant hiding from any kind of attention; this was the very worst kind of attention. Suddenly I realized the very dangerous position I'd just put myself into. Although none of my invented identities had any kind of police record, the last thing I wanted was to be sitting in a police station, being interviewed, having to defend why I was up here in the first place, why neither Eron nor any of my adopted personas had registered personhood, why I'd followed Jace up here in the first place.

My cover was blown. I had to get out of this situation.

“Do you know how to use a gun?” I asked him, returning to Eron's voice. At the very least, if I did end up in that chair at the police station, I could keep up the consistency of the act. But I was going to avoid it all, if I could.

“Used to go hunting with my dad,” he responded, pulling the long black hair out of his face and tying it back with an elastic from his pocket. “I can handle one.”

I walked slowly, carefully towards him, keeping the gun pointed at Jace. His face was still red, but now with a look of fear. Whatever he'd been planning, he'd failed.

“I can't believe he was going to shoot at us,” said the tall young man. “How can anyone shoot at another person? Why weren't his headmates stopping him?”

I took a deep sigh. There was that usual assumption, that someone without headmates was prone to violence. I clenched my jaw, kept my peace. It was a good question, though. Was he actually singlet like I'd speculated? If so, I'd finally found another one, and was face-to-face with the disappointment that he fit the stereotype of the violent singlet psychopath. I glared up at him. Maybe I was wrong, though. Maybe this was just one of those rare cases where everyone in a system was equally evil.

Either way, I couldn't stick around to find out.

I pushed the gun into the shorter man's hand, relieved to be rid of the surprising heaviness and coldness of it.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

He looked away from Jace for a moment to catch my eye. “What for?”

Without any further explanation, I turned and ran back down the path, as fast as I could.

#multiplicity #multiplemademedia #thesocietyofmultiples #ronin #nanowrimo

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1ff · 8 years ago

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The Society of Multiples, chapter 5

Catch up: (Chapter 1) (Chapter 2) (Chapter 3) (Chapter 4)

Let me know if you want to be tagged when I update so you don’t miss it ( @nevermindbinarity ) or search for the tag #thesocietyofmultiples

This update was difficult because more than half of it is new material. The first draft had a few missing sections because I figured it was easier to just skip them and avoid the writer’s block, and come back to them later. As a result, this chapter is totally reworked and mostly new, and is probably a little rough.

I’m aro/ace and trying to write a romantic subplot, so this feels very hamfisted to me and I would be grateful for advice.

Chapter 5

I only met a small cross-section of the group that evening; it was apparently an agreed convention that the entire group should never congregate together in the same place at the same time.

Over the next few weeks I got used to the rules of the group, which I assumed were similar for most groups like ours. In public, we were to deny knowing each other. We were to never use private singular names in public. We were to tell no-one that we were singular or that we know anyone who is singular. If any of us were found out, we were to deny knowing anyone in the group. Secrecy was crucial; nobody was in a situation where they could publicly announce their status. It was important not to jeopardize the rest of the group. If you found another singlet, you were to be absolutely sure that they are singular before telling them that the group even exists.

There were codes, like ‘it’s lucky I caught you alone,’ or ‘here we are, just you and I,’ or ‘sorry I’m late, my bicycle has only one tire.’ That one confused me at first, until I realized that a bicycle with only one wheel was a unicycle. There were others, some of them really obscure.

Kane offered me a job at his salon, but after spending a day sweeping and cleaning and watching the stylists and cosmeticians at work, I realized I would never have the dexterity or artistic sensibility to go anywhere in that field. Instead, Eris helped me get a job at a coffeeshop that was run by a friend of hers- an ally in the community, one of the rare multiples who knew about us and helped us out. Her name was Elga, and she was patient with both my initial awkwardness at the espresso machine and my struggles to establish one of my new fake identities, Leo.

I liked Leo; he was the kind of guy I could imagine being friends with. Social and outgoing, quick to smile, good at easing over difficult social situations. Not at all like me, in other words, but it fit the role I needed to play and was different enough from Jonas to be believable. It was exhausting, though. A few times a day I had to step into the back room and hide among the cases of coffee beans to just breathe and regroup. Elga would just pat me on the back and say, ‘you’re doing great. Fake it ‘till you make it.’

Every night after work, once I’d washed away the disguise from my face and struggled to make myself comfortable on Eris and Kane’s couch, I found myself mulling over my new personal name. I whispered it quietly into the room, letting it sit on my tongue. So short, simple, easy to hide into a spoken phrase or pass off as a meaningless utterance. I could be called it, potentially, in public, carefully, and be unnoticed.

Mem, I whispered at the darkness. Mem, Mem, Mem…

I didn’t see Emma for a few weeks; the groups that got together would rotate invitations, so it was a while before we were together again at a meeting at Eris and Kane’s. She surprised me with a huge smile and a warm hug. I wasn’t used to a lot of physical contact, trying so hard to keep my emotional distance from other people for safety’s sake. After a moment of confusion, I gave in and put my arms around her. I was amazed that such simple physical contact could feel so painful and so pure at the same time.

I caught Eris staring, then smiling, and I sat back down, a bit embarrassed.

Conversation turned to those who were absent; a quieter member of the group, Martin, had information about a member who’d gone missing.

Martin took a sip from his bourbon, leaned forward in his chair. “Samette emailed me a few days ago. She told me that she wanted everyone to know she’s doing fine.”

There was visible relief in the group.

“Unfortunately, from the sounds of it she isn’t really doing that great. Her parents found out about her- remember when she said she was worried that they were starting to catch on? They did.” He took a deep breath. “They enrolled her in therapy. Dispersion therapy.”

There were several looks of shock, disgust, and anger in the room. I’d never heard that term before but I knew exactly what it referred to. I’d heard rumours that it existed, but since few people ever talked about solity, even fewer people knew about the therapies for it.

“It was Samette that contact me, and she still called herself that, so the therapy hadn’t taken- of course. I’ve never heard of it actually working. And she still thought of herself as singular, so they hadn’t succeeded in brainwashing her into thinking she’s multiple. But she definitely sounded like she’d been messed up by the process. She said she wouldn’t contact any of us again, that she wanted to be left alone.” His voice was cracking as he finished. He took a gulp of his drink.

“Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Eris reassured him, putting a hand on his arm and handing him a box of tissues.

I could see Emma was upset as well. She looked over at me, wiping away some tears. “Samette and I are good friends,” she explained.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’d heard about the therapy, but I’ve never known anyone who had to undergo it.”

Emma shook her head. “It’s brutal. I hope none of us ever have to go through it- again.” She glanced over at Nora.

Nora stood up. “It’s important for everybody to remember that people can heal from that experience. It’s brutal and inhumane and I hope one day they stop doing it completely. I’m sure it’s not the last we’ve heard of Samette. Give her time.” She walked off, supposedly to get more snacks, but was visibly struggling to compose herself too.

Victor, who had been fairly quiet all night, cleared his throat.

“I hate to bring this up… but we need to talk about the calling-out portion of her therapy.”

There were a few angry looks in his direction, but Kane just nodded sadly. “Yes. I know it’s not pleasant, but for our own safety, we have to consider the possibility.”

“No,” Martin shook his head forcefully. “Not Samette. She even used a disposable email account and sent the message from a private server in a library. She’d never betray us.”

Eris tried to comfort him. “It’s hard to talk about, but the truth is they might not give her much of a choice. They could have doped her with sodium pentothal and given her electroshocks. She might not even have known what she was saying. If she did say anything about us, it’s not her fault.”

Martin struggled to compose himself. “Those... bastards. What the hell did she even do to anyone? She’s never hurt anyone. She’s just so innocent…” He trailed off, buried his face in his hands.

“If she’d revealed any of us, we’d know by now,” Nora told us, returning to the room with a bottle of wine. “They’d have come knocking on our doors weeks ago. We should all be careful, but I don’t think we have anything to worry about for now.”

“What are we going to do to help Samette?” Martin wanted to know.

“Leave her be for now. In time, we can try contacting her again. See if she’s willing to rejoin us. It’s all up to her. We can’t force her to join us again; that’s the difference between us and them. We let people have free agency.”

After everyone left, Eris and Kane let me decompress and discuss what we talked about, but made me promise to stop and give myself time to process it. I found myself lying awake on their couch, trying not to fall apart in anxiety and fear and confusion.

And on the other hand, I felt bad for the group, especially Martin, who seemed hard hit by Samette’s absence… and I found myself thinking again and again about Emma, and in particular about her smile.

When I had been surrounded by multiples, the idea of any sort of long-term relationship had been completely out of the question. Getting to know anybody too closely would be too huge a risk to take. I’d had a few flings and one-night stands- living in a tourist town was great for that, but had never entertained anything more serious.

Now though, I had her number in my phone, and we ended up texting late into the night.

A few days later, I moved into my new apartment. Eris and Kane helped me out as they promised, and reassured me several times over that I shouldn’t feel any guilt over it. They pointed out that this was exactly what the money had been put aside for; if I felt I needed to repay the favour, I could help them put aside new money for the fund once I settled in. They even helped me purchase and move some second-hand furniture, since I had nothing.

We still got together often, and I couldn’t have created my new set of fake identities without them. We practiced tirelessly; I spent entire days in character, experimented with makeup under Kane’s tutelage, practiced simple trips out into public both to get experience and to judge how well the disguises were working. I had been on the news a few times since I’d met Eris; violent crime was incredibly rare due to the ability of multiples to keep their headmates in check. A potential singlet who was an attempted murderer was big news- not that the newscasters ever used the word “singlet” or discussed the possibility; they mostly just referred to Jace/Rhonda in the singular and talked about them having some sort of vague mental illness. I wasn’t sure how many people on the street watched the news and decoded this kind of talk. Every time I heard about it though, I cringed.

One job for one identity was not enough; few people had jobs that required them to work more than three days a week, since anything more than that would be unfair to the other identities of a system. So when Leo wasn’t working at the coffeeshop, I found a job for “Jeff” as a line cook in a diner just outside of downtown. It was perfect; limited interactions with other people, detail oriented. They paid under the table and didn’t ask questions about me or my past. Fake beards were in style, and Kane taught me how to apply one convincingly. It was a very quick and easy disguise that didn’t resemble any of my previous fakes. Best of all, it was a relief from the pressure of being Leo.

About a week after the move, I got a text from Emma: ‘Want to catch a movie tonight?’

I found myself fidgeting. I put the phone down, made a cup of tea, looked at the message again, put away some dishes. Finally I worked up the courage to reply. ‘I thought we were supposed to avoid interacting outside of meetings?’

‘Fine then. How about we set up a date for someone else to see a movie tonight?’

We started seeing each other regularly after that, myself as Jeff and her as her fake headmate Mike in public. We kept that consistency between them; it was uncommon for multiple headmates to form relationships between different members across systems. It simplified things for us, too. We didn’t mention it to anyone else in the group, though I’m sure at least Eris and Kane figured it out.

Things sort of settled into a pattern, a sense of normalcy that made the past seem furthur and furthur away. Jace/Rhonda showed up less and less on the news. People were hopefully starting to forget my previous faces; when they showed up on newspapers at the checkout stand it was more often in the context of “Whatever happened to Jan, Eron, and Tigh?”

Sometimes it kept me up at night, though.

There was that one night, while she was sleeping peacefully on my second-hand bed, that I got up to get some water and I noticed that the TV was still on. Apparently I’d only muted it when she’d distracted me and we decided to entertain ourselves in other ways.

I was reaching for the remote when I saw my own face staring back at me. I stared back for a moment, slack-jawed, and then the screen changed to a view of talk-show host Amy talking to the camera.

I very carefully turned the volume up, just enough to hear what she was saying, hoping that it was still quiet enough to not wake Emma.

“-six months now since the incident at Lake Victor,” she was saying. “Jace/Rhonda are still being held and the trial is in a quagmire, due in part to the continued disappearance of Eron. Today we have a special guest, Winnie, who was Jace’s target that day. Thank you for coming to be on the show, Winnie.”

I was shocked to see her again- she looked good, but obviously overwhelmed. I wasn’t sure whether it was the events of her life in general now or being on the show in particular, but she looked like she’d been through a lot.

They rehashed events; Winnie talked about how Jace and Rhonda had both approached her a few times but she hadn’t really thought much about it, hadn’t realized that she was being stalked, that Jace was obsessed with her. She told Amy about being on the path, about hearing a struggle and suddenly realizing that someone had been pointing a gun at her in the middle of the woods.

They talked about Eron. Winnie looked into the camera and pleaded again that he come forward and help put the case to rest.

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

I was so startled I nearly fell over. Apparently the TV hadn’t been quiet enough; Emma was standing in the doorway.

“You saved that girl, didn’t you? You’re Eron.”

I nodded, catching my breath. “Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you tell the group?”

I sighed. “It’s like Nora says… sometimes the less we know about each other, the better. I didn’t want to share information that might put anyone in the group in danger.”

“Sure, I suppose. You could’ve told me though.”

“I didn’t want to put you in danger, especially. Besides, what does it matter? I’ve intentionally put that life behind me. I don’t want to deal with any of it anymore. I can’t let anyone find me- find them,” I clarified, pointing at faces of Eron, Jan, and Tigh back on the screen. “There would be too many questions. They would scrutinize my life too closely.”

She nodded slowly. “I suppose you’re right. I want you to know you can trust me with this kind of thing, though.”

I turned off the TV, walked over to her and held her. “I trust you. I didn’t mean to keep it a secret. I just wanted it all to go away.”

She wrapped her arms around me. “For what it’s worth,” she admitted grudgingly, “you’re really handsome as Eron. Sort of dark and mysterious.”

I laughed. “You might not think so if you met him. He’s kind of... abrassive.”

She smiled, and led me back to bed.

As I lay down next to her, I watched her close her eyes and drift off to sleep. My eyes adjusted to the faint streetlamp glow. She was stunning; she seemed so beautifully androgynous without makeup or wigs or clothing, with her short hair and the simple lines of her face revealed. I’d seen very few people before in plainface; even during sex it was an anathema to be seen with that kind of nudity. For a multiple, it would be like surgically removing flesh. They didn’t wear disguises; they applied makeup as their own faces.

We were the lowest layer, the bedrock of self, the simplest, plainest level of identity revealed. Maybe that’s why we were so hated; we were so fundamental and raw.

To be with her on that level of honesty and nudity was the most amazing feeling of my life. I wrapped my arm around her and fell asleep smiling.

#thesocietyofmultiples #nanowrimo #ronin ellis #multiplemademedia #multiplicity

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1ff · 8 years ago

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The Society of Multiples, chapter 4

Second draft of my story about an alternate world where almost everybody is multiple. If you read it, you agree to leave at least two words in response. Constructive criticism welcome.

Okay- I will probably need help with upcoming chapters, because (sorry, tiny Spoiler) there is a romantic interest and I’m pretty much entirely aro/ace. Please point out when things are cheesy/unrealistic/unconvincing/etc.

(Chapter 1)

(Chapter 2)

(Chapter 3)

If you want to be @ mentioned when I post a chapter, let me know. Also, if it helps, all posts will be tagged with #thesocietyofmultiples

@nevermindbinarity

Chapter 4

I stayed with Eris and Kane for a few days while my faces seemed to be on every channel and website. The three of us had made a quick and careful trip to my old apartment to pick up my things, but when we discovered the door unlocked and some of my things upturned, we quickly left empty-handed. I was pretty shaken by this- I was supposedly the hero, not the villain here. Why would anyone do that? What would they gain? Eris and Kane had no easy explanations.

On the drive home, we tried to reason through what we saw.

“Sometimes we wonder whether there is some sort of military or government interest in finding us and rounding us up,” Kane said bleakly. I keep trying to tell myself that it’s paranoia. But maybe it isn’t.”

“Or maybe it’s one of those creepy fetishists,” Eris added, rolling her eyes. “We know they exist. They come looking for us, and they claim to be allies, but you need to be very careful.”

“But nobody knows I’m singlet- how could they?”

Kane sighed. “You’re a completely unregistered system. That makes people suspicious.”

“Suspicious enough to search my apartment?”

Neither of them had an answer.

When we made it back to Eris and Kane’s apartment, we dropped our empty duffle bags on the coffee table and sat around wordlessly for a few minutes. Kane went off to the kitchen to make tea.

“It’s not a big deal really,” I said with a shrug. “The things in my apartment don’t really matter anyways. They were really Jan’s and Eron’s and Tigh’s. I can’t use any of those fakes now. I’m going to have to cut all ties to my past lives completely and start over.”

Eris caught Kane’s eye, and he nodded. “We can help. We’ve been saving some money for emergencies- not a lot, but enough that if anyone in our circle of singlets needed to get out of a bad situation, we would use that money to help. It’s enough for some new clothes, new makeup, new apartment, that kind of thing. There’s other help we can offer, too.”

“Including introducing you to the rest of your community,” Kane added. “Tomorrow night we’re having a meeting. There’s some generous people there who would love to help out a new friend in need. We look out for each other.”

I was nervous, but also excited. I barely slept that night- not just because of the strange, uncomfortable futon in their apartment. I felt like I had gone from drifting alone in the ocean to finally hitting land. My life was suddenly full of faceless dangers, but I’d never felt more safe.

The next afternoon, Kane took me aside and set me up with hair and makeup. In order to take me outside unrecognized, some extra disguise would be necessary, and he was especially skilled. For years he’d pulled off a mix of male and female identities that were thoroughly convincing; Eris was skilled too, but Kane could create very impressive illusions that could have earned him a profession in cosmetics. He confessed he’d always been worried about drawing too much attention. As he went to town on my new appearance, we invented my first new fake identity: skin tone a few shades darker from mine, hair dark brown with a red tint. Dark brown eyes. Thin, very straight nose. I looked masculine, but with a relaxed, almost feminine beauty. It was totally unlike any look I’d ever tried before, which was the point. As the makeup went on we worked out a the basics of this identity- Jonas, age 17, calm and demure and also a bit aloof; very attractive, but with limited sexual interest.

“Good job, gentlemen” Eris said beaming, emerging from the switchroom in a plain loose shirt and ripped jeans. She’d put on some vibrant punk-rock makeup and lightened her hair with tinted hairspray, which was holding it up into an interesting wave.

I felt a knot in my stomach. “Doesn’t all of this… kind of draw attention to ourselves? I’ve always tried to look as plain as possible. I don’t want to get noticed.”

“That’s the point, though. Everybody is trying to draw attention to themselves, express themselves as strongly as possible. If you try to look too plain you stick out like a sore thumb.” She slipped on some shiny jangly bracelets. “if you look like you’re trying not to be seen, you’ll look like you’re hiding something.” She looked in the mirror. “There. Looks good, right? Sometimes this is fun. When we’re out of the house, call me “Mary.” She’s the one who dresses like this. Bit of a 80’s party girl.”

“You sound like you’re actually enjoying this,” I said in disbelief.

She shrugged. “It’s something we have to do. Since we don’t really have any choice, why not have a little fun with it?”

This week’s meeting was at the home of Nora, publically known as Tim, Dianne, Dora, and Grace. She was older, tall, and gave a first impression as stern and untrusting. At her apartment door, she looked me up and down, nodded slowly.

“You’re the new stray then,” she said, offering her hand. “What should we call you?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled with a quiet shrug, shaking her hand.

She looked me up and down discerningly. “Funny. All the new ones start off with that name. Well, come on in, then.”

Nora’s apartment looked oddly stereotypical for a grandmother in her sixties, with haphazardly-dusted tchotchkes and a box of tissues in every corner. A huge mother-in-law’s-tongue plant almost blocked the hall at one point, which I found a little humorous.

She led us into her living room, where a group of people were already sitting and waiting. There were six of them, not including Nora, Eris, Kane, and myself. It was so strange knowing that a count of heads would be a count of persons here- only ten of us altogether, and nobody hidden behind another face. Everyone here was like me. That made me feel giddy and terrified and safe and awkward- I felt like I was juggling so many strange emotions that I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Nora presented me to the group. “Folks, this is ‘I don’t know,’ some fresh blood for our little community. Please make ‘I don’t know’ feel welcome.” There were a few nervous giggles. I realized that I must invite some anxiety and fear in them; would there be people out there wanting to infiltrate a group like this? Journalists, researchers, maybe even domestic intelligence or law enforcement? We weren’t doing anything wrong, but that wouldn’t matter for a lot of people. It wouldn’t matter what we did, but who we are that would make us criminal.

“Have a seat,” Nora said, warming up to me. “Can I get you anything to drink? I have fresh tea, coffee, and a well-stocked liquor cabinet.” She ushered me to a large and comfortable chair.

“I’ll have coffee,” I said weakly, sort of falling into the chair.

“With Irish cream?”

“Huh? Oh, um- sure. A little.”

Nora winked as she went off to the kitchen.

Sitting next to me was a young woman about my age- my real age, 24. She was eyeing me suspiciously through bright green eyes that I assumed must be contacts.

“You haven’t picked a name for yourself?” She asked, with a very smooth and beautiful francophone accent.

I shook my head. “I never wanted to. It seemed sad to me that it would be only for myself. Why have a name that nobody calls you? Just so you can say it to yourself?”

She laughed. “Parfois, je me parle à moi-même. Et puis on rit tous els deux.”

“Sorry, I’m not very bilingual.”

“It means… it’s an expression. Um, basically, ‘Sometimes, I talk to myself. And then the two of us have a good laugh.’ It’s funny, being so lonely, we probably talk to ourselves more than the multiples do, even though there’s only our one self to talk to.”

I tried rolling the expression around on my tongue. “Can you say it again?” Nora was pushing a cup of coffee into my hands. “Thank you, Nora.”

“Parfois, je me parle à moi-même... Et puis on rit tous els deux.”

I took a sip of my coffee; there was more than ‘a little bit’ of Irish creme. “Moi-même?”

“My self,” she said with a smile. “Maybe that would be a good name for you. It’s better than ‘J’e sais pas.’”

“Mem,” I said, listening to the sound of it. Like memory, remember, member, meme. A name that means ‘myself,’ in the singular. “I like it.”

“Nice to meet you, Mem. My name is Emma.” We shook hands; she had a warm smile.

#thesocietyofmultiples #Ronin Ellis #multiplemademedia #nanowrimo #multiplicity #fiction #neurodivergent

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