V is for Vagenda (Part 25 – Split Decision)

V is for Vagenda (Part 25 – Split Decision)

“Those who are aware of their condition and experience themselves as "multiple" might refer to themselves as "we" rather than "I." I shall use the term "multiple" at times, in respect for their internal experience. It is important to point out, however, that I recognize that someone who is multiple is actually a single fragmented person rather than many people. On the outside, a multiple is probably not visibly different from anyone else. But that image is only an imitation: people who are multiple cannot think like the rest of us, and we cannot think like them. (In fact, since it is difficult for the multiple to understand how singletons think, some of them might think that is is you who are strange).

Just as a singleton cannot become a multiple at will, a multiple cannot become a singleton until and unless the barriers between the parts of the self are removed. Those barriers were put up to enable the child to tolerate, and so survive, unavoidable abuse.

Multiple: a person with dissociative identity disorder (DID) or DDNOS.

Singleton: a person without DID or DDNOS, i.e. with a single, unified personality”

― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

It is not easy to describe, as it was like I was in a dream.  Everyone from both the Lords of Order and Chaos assembled to debate in this dimension outside of time, to pass judgement on me.  Every soul, if that is even the right word to use, was like a color without a shape; but connected, like living smoke.  Maybe it was my mind trying to create a visual, struggling to process the sensation of my surroundings into something tangible, something I could process and make sense of.  I distinctly remember the voices, and the sense that there was no proper dimension as I know it.  The feeling that we were each a shapeless, morphing, shifting ethereal thing that both occupied space, and didn’t occupy space – it was hard to track who was who until I associated colors with the voices.  It started to almost feel like a lava lamp universe of some kind, so alien, yet somehow a very incredibly broken down simplification of the actual nature of our soul – I think…. Did I think that, or hear that?  It kind of sounded like my voice, but I’m not sure where that idea came from and I don’t think I spoke it.

As I acclimate to this, I start to understand what they are arguing about.  Someone opened a secret tomb of forbidden spells.  No – it is worse – someone used one!  “It wasn’t my fault, I was under someone else’s influence when I was forced to learn the spell, and I was under yet another’s influence when I was forced to use the spell.”

Wait, did I say that?  I’m looking toward where I heard my voice and see a cloud of light blue.  No, Sky Blue.  My mind is distinctly identifying this as Sky Blue?  It is so confusing.  “I didn’t say that, did I?” I say, hoping to get clarification – reassured since I’m hearing my voice come from my own sense of location and not where I hear my other voice.

“This convocation recognizes both Vagenda’s in this matter.  Nabu, do you recognize the second as a consequence to your influence?”…

That seemed to be coming from everyone simultaneously?  I start to feel cold, creeped out, as the unified voice begins to fragment into separate lines of thought and argument between all the participants around me.  The various directions the voices are coming from become frightening.  Even in a crowded city, the directions of random voices are limited to a 2 dimensional plane encircling me, and I have bearings.  I know up from down, left from right, etc.  I’ve never had a sensation like this.  The sense of emotion and dialog spherically surrounding me in 3 dimensions, and I have no bearing on any direction. 

I can hear some talk of how it was Nabu’s responsibility for possessing my body and forcing me to learn one of the forbidden spells.  I relive the horror of having been summoned, transformed, and that energy piercing through me, enslaving me inside myself to his will, becoming a monster of his design, forced to read what should never be read, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, until it was memori… wait a minute, that never happened!  I don’t remember any of that?  I’m living juxtaposition of resentment and denial, of confusion and anger, of remorse and delight.  This contradiction inside myself, I’m beside myself.  I don’t understand. 

Next I hear an argument about how I killed, that it was my mind that knew the spell, spoke the words, cast the energy, erased the life…  Erased the life?  No, I’m a healer!  I would never do anything like that!  I can and can’t recall it.  Another points out that I was not conscious or in any way in control of my actions, that it was Circe who commanded I do my worst, that it was Nabu who supplied me with what my worst truly was.  Nabu adding his arguments to the type of person affected, appealing to fate, and to what fate that they all know awaits me regardless as appeasement to judgement toward my person should they still have any.  Guilt, shock, denial, confidence, rage, remorse, aggravation – am I losing my ability to control my emotions?

Another adds that due to the nature of the spell even the Lords can no longer know what fate was before the spell was cast versus what fate is now, suggesting Nabu’s reasoning is out of convenience since no one could hope to know if help or harm was truly done to the timeline.  She shapes and trajectories of voices start shifting violently on this point.  I feel a lot of pride poisoning the arguments.  It is chaotic, and I can’t make anything out until suddenly I have a new mental depiction.  My mind struggles to process and now the imagery changes.

I’m in the country, at night, under a full moon, by a very old abandoned hockey rink.  The roof is gone, the walls are barely holding up.  The wood is largely rotten, and the paint is all long gone.  The bleachers are intact and the ice is somehow still there.

I don’t know how or why, but everyone is taking a more familiar corporeal form.  Is this what they chose, or is this how my mind is processing the experience?  Clearly defined shaped emerge in the arena, and somehow I know them by sight.  Closest to me, I sense Deedra, Jheryl, Vandaemon, Gorrum, Mordru, and myself.  Each are holding what looks like a flashlight.  Everyone’s arguments, from fact to feeling, the innate infused passion behind the sentiment, it all seems to be represented in their weapon and I’m seeing it as the color and intensity of the light coming from them.  I have one two.  Mine is an intense light that I am somehow compelled to yell “French Rose” in order to shoot the light out.

Wait, how can I be near myself in this scenario?  I’m taken back as I hear my voice emerge screaming out “Sky Blue!” and I see me running into the Arena as a battle emerges.  The voices scatter in my mind as it quickly escalates.  All I hear is “Emerald Green!”, “Ruby Red!”, “Lavender!”, “Jasmine Yellow!”, “True Blue!”, “Chestnut Brown!”, and many more as I fly over the rick looking down at the lightshow of the battle.  It doesn’t seem appropriate for me to get involved further.  No further “French Rose” will contribute to this balance.  I’m not really sure what I’m seeing.

Is this how the Lords Of Order and Chaos debate in their realm?  Am I involved as “Sky Blue”?  If so, why am I holding “French Rose”?

I awake alone in my room.  What a weird dream…

Split Decision

Future Luthor, pacing, activates his com to signal to Laura Lightning.  She quickly answers.

“What is the status of your mission?  I grow impatient at the lack of progress that seems to be made in your objectives.  Or have you forgotten who you answer to while busying yourself with this new League of yours?” Future Luthor scowls.

“I’ve done everything you asked of me.  I left my fiancé.  I went to every event you claimed she would be at, and even those I deduced she would be at.  She didn’t even go to the wake for her ex.  Did you know that?  Are you sure about your own data?” Laura snipes back defiantly.

“You forget yourself” Future Luthor snaps back.  “You may be leader in Danger Force, but your ego drove your objective out of the league.  That scenario was handed to you, and it was your own blinded nature that ruined a perfect opportunity.  Perhaps you need a reminder.”

Future Luthor turns on another monitor showing Laura Lantern strapped to a table, with several medical leads attached to her body to equipment that is distinctly not medical looking.

Future Luthor smirks back “You’ve lost yourself.  You’ve lost a connection to one of you.  Surprised?  Try reaching out.  You can’t, can you.  Can you even remember her?  If it wasn’t for the resemblance…”  Lex turns down a dial on a remote lowering a bright force field from around Laura Lantern.

“STOP!” Laura Lightning screams horrified as memories of that self suddenly are flooding back.  It pains her to realize she had forgotten herself and the sum of those experiences.  It pains her to receive it all back in a brief moment.  She holds her head struggling to stay standing as Future Luthor geers.

“Don’t forget who I am, young pawn.  I’ve the collective knowledge on how Brainiac defeated all of you.  You were built to be three.  You’ve been living as two, and didn’t even remember your third self.  Living as a duality left you unstable, and apparently that left you self-absorbed.  Perhaps you felt that void and were trying to fill it.”  Future Luthor throws another switch electrocuting Laura Lantern, and raises the field as she dies.

“How dare you!” Laura lashes back, the pain becoming numbness as the field rises again.  “You will regret that, you monster!”

Future Luthor doesn’t seem threatened or impressed at the reaction at all as he turns on another monitor.  This time there are three tables, with three more Laura’s.

“Say hello to Laura Lifebringer, Laura Luminary, and Laura Legend – built from your own DNA to my specifications and needs.  As soon as I lower this field, this stable trio will join your consciousness, and dominate the watered down psyche that will result from it.  You were built for three, got selfish as two, let’s see if you are a little more malleable to my will as a minority within five” Future Luthor declares with a leering sense of finality.

The force field lowers, and Laura Lightning’s eyes glaze over as the three new clones, and their experience collectively, integrate into her whole.