Chapter 38: The Tallymarks That Remember Me
There was something profoundly wrong about the way it pulsed — the strange red line that hovered in the middle of the void, breathing like a dying heartbeat. Not fast. Not urgent. Just there, steady and... intimate, in the most unsettling way. I didn't feel fear. I didn't even feel caution. I felt a pull.
A connection.
"Well of fucking course I feel a connection," I muttered aloud, already rolling my eyes at myself. "It's in my own damn head."
The mockery landed flat, though, because some part of me already knew this was more than just psychic décor. I reached out toward the line — hand trembling just a little — and braced for disintegration. Always a good instinct. Always my baseline. But nothing happened. My fingers brushed the pulsing line of red and—
Silence. Then rupture.
The red line detonated across my field of vision without so much as a bang, splitting the void horizon to horizon in a perfectly level cut of black. The red hue vanished in an instant, replaced by inky obsidian... and red tally marks. Hundreds. Thousands. Infinite rows of them stamped like blood-inked memories against the black.
"How... fucking bizarre," I murmured, entirely too calm about the psychic railgun that had just unzipped my brain.
Curiosity is a bitch. So, naturally, I touched the line again.
It was responsive. Sensitive, even. The black surface shifted under my fingers with a whisper of psychic movement, tally marks sliding past like chapters in a book I hadn't written but was somehow the protagonist of. A light push to the left, and the tallies blurred by — each one glowing faintly red.
Then I brushed one by accident.
The contact sent a voice into my ears like the ghost of déjà vu. "Irvine-mate is—" zip, gone.
I froze.
That wasn't my voice. That was Kimchi.
"Was that... Kimchi?" I asked the void like it might answer.
I reversed the scroll — dragging the tallies back until the one I'd touched reappeared, quiet and unassuming. I pressed my hand against it again, slower this time.
"Very good, Irvine-mate. Remember to keep your elbow level and your feet—yes, just like that."
The memory closed with a gentle snap the moment the sentence ended. I touched it again. Same words. Same tone.
I frowned. "I don't remember this. We've trained too many fucking times for me to remember one random sentence from a Tuesday with swords."
So what the hell was this?
Not a dream.
Not a hallucination.
Maybe a new power?
I looked left, then right. The line was endless in both directions, but something about the left felt like it led toward a beginning. So I started tugging. Not metaphorically. I literally yanked the glowing timeline like it was a stubborn rope, hauling it inch by inch through empty psychic space.
Ten minutes later — sweatless but winded — I reached it.
A tally. But not just a tally. A massive one. As though it were etched by something enormous, ancient, reverent.
I didn't hesitate.
I placed my hand against the oversized mark.
"Greetings, small-spawn."
That was it. Just four words. But they crushed me.
I dropped to my knees like gravity had tripled. Those words—those emotions—hit like tectonic plates shifting in the deep ocean of my mind. Kimchi's voice wasn't just a sound. It was an event. A memory heavy enough to warp my reality. Somehow, that single phrase carried more emotional weight than anything I'd ever heard in my life.
When I managed to stand, my knees still buckling slightly, I moved on. I needed confirmation. Needed to know if this was all just Kimchi's greatest hits or if the psychic line had deeper logic.
The next tally hummed under my hand.
"Now that we are connected psionically, I can feel your fear and disorientation. Please be at ease, our one. This one means no harm."
That warmth wasn't mine. That was hers. Emotional bleed. A feedback loop of empathy transmitted through these tallies.
They weren't just recordings.
They were Kimchi's memories of me.
And then it hit me.
Every tally wasn't just a sentence. It was a moment. One she'd considered special — sacred, even. That's why it started with our meeting. That's why the emotions were so raw. She'd catalogued these things like holy relics. I meant that much to her.
I smiled.
And then immediately regretted it.
"Little-spawn is on my thorax. Little-spawn is on my thorax. Little-spawn is on my thorax. Little-spawn is on my thorax. Little-spawn is on my thorax—"
The tally I'd just touched screamed at me at warp speed. I yanked my hand back like I'd been electrocuted.
Jesus fuck.
Looking down the line, I could already tell the next several hundred tallies were just variations of the same panicked shriek.
So not every memory was sacred. Some were just... nonsense. Or affection. Or trauma.
Still, this changed the game.
I wasn't just listening to old conversations. I was reading psychic highlight reels. Kimchi's favorite memories — the ones she kept with obsessive clarity.
Even the boring ones.
I reached out and touched a random one.
"Today, Irvine asked for more water. I gave it to him. He smiled."
That was it. That was the entire memory. And it was glowing with the same reverent clarity as the first one. Just me, being a dumb thirsty idiot. And yet... it mattered to her.
I had to sit with that for a moment.
Eventually, I resolved to train this power — figure out if it could be directed or evolved. But before I could even step away from the line, my hand moved again. Not my choice.
Compulsion seized me like a puppet's string yanked taut. My hand dragged the line left, fast, the tallies blurring past until they began to slow again... right at the very end.
A new tally appeared. Fresh. Still forming.
I reached for it—but my hand veered off course, pulled to a slightly older one. Five tallies back.
My fingers touched.
"Kimchi is very sorry this has happened to you, my queen. This is a great tragedy. But forgive Kimchi... why are we not telling Irvine? I'm sure he would want to know."
Her voice cracked under the weight of it. Not just sadness. Not just worry. Grief.
I froze.
Queen?
Tragedy?
Secrets?
I tried to scroll forward, tried to find more—but the tallies became nonsense again. Kimchi talking about how I looked while sleeping. Kimchi wondering aloud if my hair had grown. Kimchi whispering that she'd die for me in 47 different poetic metaphors.
Nothing relevant.
And nothing right.
I stepped back. The line snapped itself shut like a guillotine made of red light, returning to its original form: small, humming, floating in darkness.
"Right," I said to no one. "How the fuck do I get out of here?"
No answer.
But when I turned away from the line, the space around me shifted — the endless void fracturing into green and heat and sound.
I was back in the jungle. Back in the real.
"Time to get to the bottom of this," I muttered. "Wake up."
—
I opened my eyes.
First thing I saw was Crystal's faceplate looming over mine, tilted with concern and confusion.
"Are you alright, my love?" she asked softly. "Toward the end of your sleep, I felt an unusual dishevel in your mind. You're normally an active dreamer — kinetic, imaginative, unhinged — but for a few moments... you felt hollow. Then you returned. But not quite the same."
"Yeah, I'm okay, precious," I said, sitting up and kissing her chin. "I think I just developed a new psionic power, and it's thrown me for a bit of a loop."
Crystal's voice sparked with excitement. "A new power? That's wonderful! Wait—you didn't go into your Mindspace, did you?"
"No... or at least, not any part of it I know."
She leaned closer, antennae twitching with curiosity. "Then tell me, my darling Irvine. What happened?"
I told her. Everything. The battle-dream interrupted. The red line. The tallies. The voices. Kimchi's memories. And finally... that memory. The one that shouldn't have been accessible.
When I quoted the words exactly, Crystal's expression cracked.
She knew them.
Of course she did. That sentence was said to her — privately — through a closed, two-way psionic channel. One only accessible to her and Kimchi.
No one else. No one.
Not unless they were stronger than her psychically.
Or... me.
She felt both awe and guilt. Because the fact I could accidentally intercept that message made her proud. But also ashamed. Because now she knew: I'd caught them keeping something from me.
Something important.
Something tragic.
Before she could retreat into her spiral, I cut straight to the heart of it.
"So," I said slowly, "what great tragedy has befallen you, and why the fuck are you not telling me about it?"