1174. Wounded minds, 6
(Armylè)
A week or so later, Morhens had still not listened to the song records. He kept them somewhere in his office.
He had not returned to his former angry self, but he appeared a little better at least.
He even thanked Johann.
If not all was solved, there had been a good change for the doctor.
However the angry ghost eventually appeared in a corridor of the laboratory one day.
As Morhens walked around the laboratory, reading results, she appeared. Néphéline’s silhouette contrasted weirdly with everyone else in laboratory coats. She looked like an hallucination more than a visitor.
Her clothing was dark, her gaze was aggressive. She had one of her last pink ribbons in her hair.
The child looked like an evil spirit haunting this place, a stranger to this world of white and pastel colours. The scientists were puzzled passing beside her, but didn’t care.
This corridor was too distant from the entrances to the centre for her to have just wandered in randomly. She wasn’t there by chance and they were too busy to care. Someone had let her in, she was that person’s problem.
Morhens had noticed her and recognised her, but didn’t care at the moment. He continued his way, reading his sheet of results. He didn’t look back to check whether she followed or not.
He even gave some notes and orders along the way. Johann waved at Néphéline but she didn’t reply. She didn’t even see him.
Morhens exchanged more data and decisions along his way, unfazed by the spooky shade following him like a curse. She had not called out to him as he passed by her side and he didn’t either.
Before returning to his office, Morhens went toward the main nuclear test chamber being completed. He went across the wide spherical room, the catwalks for everyone assembled into an array of material crossing the wide space at good height. Néphéline followed without an apparent care either at first. Around them, teams of technicians were assembling the last mobile panels of refractory scales. Soon enough, it would confine extremely hot plasmas in this domain.
It was her discovery of what the city’s undergrounds could actually be. The wider industrial sights eventually bugged and impressed Néphéline. Everything was underground, and Johann had worked tirelessly to make it possible. They had reshaped some of the original foundation frame of the city and dug through some of the rock plateau, in order to get the room for this new experimental reactor chamber. And it was a consequential one on par with the existing nuclear fusion reactors of the city.
Néphéline was only discovering what industrial architecture and mechanical engineering of our city could really be. Our pretty houses on the surface were precisely only the shallow skin of what technology mastery really was. The blue sun was about crafting such powers out of new understandings of physics, making the natural inclinations of reality working for us at every conceivable level.
Wheels. Sails. Rockets. Computers.
And soon a flow of T.I. into plasma control.
Doctor Morhens and his team envisioned a future where the city energy efficiency could be increased closer to one, and perhaps even higher from previous standards. And if you get enough energy to transform other things, you have everything.
Some of the nuclear physicists from the other sectors were eager to hear more, and waiting as impatiently as Morhens to see this work reach its conclusion.
Néphéline had gawked for a moment too long at the mere architecture of the room, only just realising how small and young she was in front of this purpose and industry. She had just picked a book she couldn’t read, and Morhens had kept on walking. She almost lost track of him, distracted.
She ran after him to catch up and eventually pester him, even if she still couldn’t manage to voice her words when facing him.
Along the many rooms and corridors of annex machineries surrounding the main globe, Morhens made a quick review of everything.
He spent a little longer checking the powerful plasma torches redesigned by Johann being installed.
Everything was getting ready and Morhens was ticking his document regularly. Some team leaders and technicians confirmed along the way that everything was progressing well, and none questioned the weird presence in the background.
Néphéline was oblivious to most of the principles of heavy industry, fundamental physics or nuclear engineering. She had still been enough in school to recognise the traditional warning pictograms adorning about one of two unknown machines she passed by. It didn’t stop her, but really made her feel she wasn’t in the same world. There was the lively surface, and this busy underground ruled differently. She was stressed.
But she followed the horror she wanted to hurt.
Although she would manage to hold on from indulging in her most illegal sanguinary impulses, she had not come all this way just to keep everything bottled in. Probably. She had hatred to spit.
Morhens finished his inspection tour and then went through the open sphere again to reach eventually his office.
She still followed nervously and angrily.
Morhens sat in his chair and breathed.
He kept working, now going through other reports.
Néphéline looked around and saw a bag he might have used. She went to look through it without asking. She began her search impolitely.
Morhens who had not been amiable enough to dignify her presence either eventually grew annoyed by the distraction she was causing. He looked at her with brow furrowed. She was throwing everything around looking for these things.
G - It’s not there.
Néphéline lifted the bag upside down to scatter its content in an insulting manner.
He sighed.
G - So predictable, it’s stupid. Alright, you’ve pretended to be dumb long enough, so speak.
All Néphéline could hear were insults. She was too nervous and angered to find her words.
N - You... Ass!
G - Yes. That’s precisely why I came around to meet you.
N - What?
Morhens crossed his arms, feeling that irritation growing in him. He wanted her out, but was beginning to have fun playing the sadist.
G - I’ve been unmotivated, and your sick personality was just the right irritant to get me back being a good asshole. Not just for me, it’s for everyone here that my bad personality is needed. We all need my mean ass to work properly.
Néphéline was terrified.
N - You’re all fucking insane...
G - We’re all humans. You’re the only crazy one here.
N - Stop calling me that!
G - Why? Aren’t you? Insane. Different?
Néphéline was about to say something but remained stuck. She realised something.
G - See. You are intelligent enough. Being lucid, you can make things work your way. As for your records, they’re in that drawer over there.
He pointed it out. She rushed to get her precious mementos back.
Meanwhile Morhens was looking for something mean to say. Although if she left faster, that would also be better.
G - Ah. I forgot, before you leave...
N - Because you think I’m going to stay and listen to you, fucking cunt?
G - Oh I’m sure you will be happy to hear about it, ninny... It’s that I have that one other record of Cheryl songs you don’t have.
Néphéline was reaching the door when she heard that. She was shaking. Not crying, but laughing bitterly.
She glared back at him.
N - You sad bitch... I’m the one who made her reach the stages and light. I was there for every recorded event...
Néphéline had wanted to feel superior, but really she opened her own wound.
Because she was forced to recall her moments spent with Prume.
G - You believe so? Then you don’t know about that song that speaks of you... Girl with pink...
That was a bluff. She knew it. But something nevertheless exploded inside of her. Her anxieties got hold of her and the vague idea Morhens had offered. In her pain, she made the worst possible interpretation of it.
Néphéline was spooked by her own imagination more than what this evil man had said. Holding onto her precious treasures, she ran away. She was too shocked to quite sort out that she had imagined most of her own torment this time.
Morhens had bet on the pink detail he somewhat recalled, and on the easily accessible truths.
That girl was crazy about Cheryl, that had been obvious. It made manipulation all the easier, any passion and obsession being an open door to insanity.
Morhens was aware of it for another obvious reason, he was reasonably self aware as well.
He had not really aimed to help Néphéline, nor to harm her really. He did not care about her.
He had made an experiment on par with poking an animal to see how it would react. Uncouth curiosity and a mean hypothesis had worked all too well in this game. Néphéline had over reacted, and it was the miracle of human psychology from Geder’s perspective.
Humans don’t react appropriately to everything they encounter.
And they always can draw connections between events to make sense out of anything that happens to them. Even if it’s really illogical or futile. And Néphéline had been so easy to bait and fish, it had been grossly amusing to him.
Not enough to develop a real liking to seeing other people suffer, but still.
He was still more relieved to see her gone.
Indulging into sadistic impulses wasn’t his drive nor aim. He had better things to achieve. The annoyance was gone and some of his spirit returned. Nothing else mattered.
At least to him.
~
Néphéline, she ran home in turmoil. She was being gnawed by despicable things. Atrocious doubts. Unbearable thoughts.
Tears were beading, piercing and eating her everywhere.
Had Prume loved her? Really ever did?
Now in her shades, she couldn’t find anything but doubt in her memories. Prume had always been rather reserved, toward everyone. Of course she never strongly expressed her expression for Néphi.
However Néphéline was losing balance over the loss of Prume, and now even the unsteady pillar of memories was crumbling.
So thin and stretched, the threads still keeping her together were now failing.
It withered. Prume was leaving.
Néphéline was suffering that loss again. The wound had yet to heal.
So she returned home still in shock.
She called for her grandmother for help but didn’t find her. On that day and time, she was apparently outside. At the worst possible time, when the exercise to strengthen her had failed, she was not here to pick up the leftovers.
Néphéline was breaking down and couldn’t hold her hands shaking.
She was panicking, devouring the hopes inside.
She unsteadily returned to her room, only to find it still a portrayal of destruction. Everything was upside down and the floor cluttered with broken mess. Until she stepped inside that last form of shelter, she had forgotten how she had left it.
Discovering and recalling she had done that herself, it was too much disarray. It was the final blow over her torment.
She let herself fall there, holding her head and crying.
There was nothing left ahead to see for Néphéline.
~
