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I felt pain.
And pain.
And pain.
And pain.
And pain.
Even when the pain finally stopped, there was an omnipresent stinging that surrounded me. I was enveloped in darkness. I’m not sure if it lasted a minute, an hour, or an eon, but it felt interminable. It wasn’t a physical space. It lacked definition in any sense. Even the darkness itself was not black, but the absence of color or context.
And then the darkness vanished and I was surrounded by a sea of blue. No, not surrounded by color, but in a sea itself. It took a fraction of a second for my clothes and then myself to become utterly soaked.
It took several seconds to realize I can’t breathe underwater. I looked around in every direction for the surface, but in every direction, I could only see open water. One direction felt up and one direction felt down, but there were no signs of the surface anyway. If I was so far underwater that no surface was in sight, then it should be dark, but it felt as bright as though I were on the surface.
I flailed around wildly. It felt like hell. I was drowning.
“Why don’t you breathe?” I heard a voice from behind me. I turned around to see a woman floating in the water not far from me. When I didn’t respond, she continued. “You can breathe. You don’t have to drown unless you want to. Of course, I have had some pilots who found that relaxing, but you don’t seem the type.”
I reached my limit. Desperate for air, I opened my mouth, and practically screamed for fresh air that seemed to no longer exist.
The woman cocked her head quizzically.
Then I realized that water isn't filling my lungs. I took a few cautionary breaths, then let out a sigh of relief. But that only left me more confused.
“What…?”
The woman tilted her head to the other side, then giggled. “Are you confused, adon? I’m Rán.”
Then my memories flooded back to me. Rán. The Pygmalion. That I was piloting at this very moment. That I had melded my mind with. That I was communicating with.
Rán swam to my side, then in a circle around me. “What’s the issue? You’re still quiet.”
“I… uh. This is a lot to adjust to.”
“Right. It often is. Take your time.”
I nodded slowly, then looked around. Knowing that this was the inside of my Pygmalion helped my unease at this watery void I was stuck in, but it didn’t wholly absolve that anxiety.
“Why are we… out here?”
Rán shrugged. “I like water. I tried letting your mind mold the space, but something went wrong, I stepped in and made our internal space to our liking. I can change it if you like.”
There was a seafloor a few feet below us, and in the distance to the right, I could see seaside cliffs climbing out of the water into the air. Around, below, and above us, all kinds of wildlife swam around, and on the seaflore, plants fluttered around in the current. Yet, all were at a distance, and seemed to only swim around us.
I kicked over to one side, approaching the fish, but then Rán called out to me. “This is still a mental construct. If you want those fish to be real, I’m sure we could, but there are probably better uses of our time.”
I turned back to face her, but as I did, something behind her caught my eye. A hazy cloud, one which had been lost in the watery voice before, but now stood out strongly against the lively sea.
I stared at it, and Rán followed my eyeline, until we were both looking at the cloud. I started to swim towards it, when suddenly, it felt like everything shifted. No longer was I facing inland, towards the cliffs in the distance. Rather, I was looking out at the open sea. And in front of me, several dozen feet away, was another dark cloud, and nearby it, Rán. Somehow, I had switched placed.
I started swimming towards Rán and the cloud. But then, the cloud stopped. I tilted my head to one side. Rán mirrored the action. She looked between me and the cloud a few times, then indicated that she wanted me closer.
“This seems odd, adon.”
“What is ‘this’?’”
“Well, there’s two of you. I can’t pilot twins. Not sure how this happened.”
“I’m only one person. What do you mean?”
Rán stared at me silently for a few seconds. While she did, for the first time, I looked down at myself. My body was a formless dark cloud, identical to the other body.
I was glad when Rán finally spoke up, because I wasn’t going to figure it out on my own. “There’s two of you. Three people in total in our shared mental headspace.” She fell silent again to think, before speaking again. “Maybe the reason you don’t have a physical form is related to your inability to construct headspace. What is your mental perception of yourself usually like, adon? Just imagine that.”
“Just im… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Your body, your self. The you that exists in your mind.”
“Nothing exists in my mind. Just thoughts.”
“Just thoughts?” Rán seemed genuinely shocked at that. “I’ve never had a pilot like that before.” She swam around me and the other dark cloud, then started humming quietly. “Try becoming something.”
“Like what?”
“Yourself. Or whatever you want to be.”
“I really do not understand what you mean.”
“C’mon, y’know?” Rán waved her arms around frustratedly. “Like, have a body. Change yourself.” As if to prove her point, she rapidly flickered between a number of different bodies.
“You’re a Pygmalion. Of course you can do that.”
“You’re a human, adon. You can do it too. All my other pilots could.”
“How?” I was just barely holding myself back from shouting at her.
“Just, like…” Rán gestured vaguely. “Use your head. Your brain. Just use whatever your internal perception of yourself is.”
“I don’t have an internal perception. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I already told you, it’s just thoughts.”
“Well… Just try. Just think and make a body for yourself.”
I didn’t respond. I tried to do as she said, to think, to mold my body, as foreign as that was. I wasn’t even sure what to do, so I just stood there. I closed my eyes and concentrated. I told myself that I would only try for a couple minutes before giving up. So I stood there, or floated, or existed, with my eyes closed, as much in a void as before Rán shaped the cockpit.
I opened my eyes again. I was still in that fake ocean.
I looked down.
I didn’t see a dark cloud.
I saw a body.
My own body. It felt like me. It was the same form I would see when I looked down at myself in the real world.
The other dark cloud had taken form, too. It felt creepy to see a perfect replica of myself only a few feet away, and the question of its existence was only becoming more anxious.
I swam over to it, and the around in a circle, much like Rán had done just a bit ago. Moving with this body came morer naturally than I expected, but then, it was just my normal body. It just felt like moving. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting it to be.
The other body was like a wax doll. It was a perfect simulacrum.
“Try saying hi.”
I turned back to Rán. “Say… hi? Why can’t you do that?”
“Because it’s you, not me.”
I didn’t want to argue with her anymore. Even if it felt like it wouldn’t do anything, I knew I should just try it.
I didn’t want to look it in the eyes, so I just spoke. “Uh, hi.”
As expected, my double didn’t respond. It felt uncanny.
Then it moved.
I felt like I shifted. Once again, the body I was in changed and I was looking at myself from a different perspective. This time, however, the other body was moving. I cocked my head to the side.
It wasn’t moving a lot. It was just floating in the water, but that was more than the other body had been doing. The body that I now was. Or that I had returned to.
“Hello?” It repeated that again. “Hello?”
I was so stunned that it was talking to me that I didn’t know how to respond. Eventually, I stammered out a reply.
“Uh, hi?”
The simulacrum stared at me with unblinking eyes. I stared back, completely uncertain of what to say.
“This is interesting.” Rán interrupted our silent stare when she swam between us. “There’s only one body in my cockpit. I’m not like Janus. So that wouldn’t work in the first place. And it seems like the two of you are as clueless as I am. I don’t think anything went wrong while we were synchronizing, so your brain should still be in one piece…” Her face lit up, as if she had the solution. “Your brain must have already been broken! Were there two of you before?”
“N-no!”
I blinked. I had spoken in unison with my doppelganger.
She— the doppelganger— swam forward. “It’s always been just me. I have no idea where… this came from.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. She was implying that she was the original. My first impulse was to suggest that I was the real one, however cliche that was. But I stopped myself, because that didn’t feel any truer than to say she was the original.
“Who are you?”
I realized as soon as the words left my mouth that it was a mistake to ask that, but I had to commit to it.
She responded tersely. “I’m Aria.”
“I’m also Aria. I’m not sure how.”
Rán had swum off to the side and had started doing laps around us, but she stopped. “It’s like I said. Your brain must be broken. Normal brains don’t have two people in them. Trust me, I’ve had a bunch of pilots before, and they’ve all been limited to one person per brain.”
“But I’ve always been alone in my head!” The other me was shouting. “I’ve never had anyone else in my head. It’s always just been me.”
“Ah, huh.” Rán hummed a low, quiet hum as she thought. “How do you think?”
“I just think! What else is there to it? I have thoughts that are in my head, where I’m alone.”
I held up my hand. “I can elaborate on this more. The way I— we, I suppose— think is that there are thoughts and little else. None of the embellishment that exists in media. Certainly nothing like this. It’s not a great comparison, but an ancient computer, before UIs were developed, when it would just be lines of text on a screen, or maybe even before screens were invented. That kind of thing.” I sighed. “I don’t know if I’m explaining myself well.”
The other me nodded along with what I was saying. “It makes sense to me. That’s how I think, too. It’s normal, right?”
“Well, it’s two to one here, but we’re the same person, so I don’t think it counts…”
Rán wagged her finger. “You have the same brain. You aren’t the same person. There’s a difference.”
The other me groaned. “Is there? Same brain, same person.”
“Nah!” Rán giggled. “You’re different people. I can tell. For one, you’re an asshole.” She pointed at the other me. “And she isn’t.” As Rán pointed at me, my doppleganger turned to glare. I sheepishly held my arms in front of me. Before things could get worse, Rán continued. “That wasn’t meant as an insult, adon. It’s a statement of fact.”
“You’re calling me an asshole. How else was I supposed to take it?”
Rán shrugged. “I just told you. You’re brash. Blunt. An asshole.”
“Then call me blunt.”
“You’re blunt.”
The other me glared.
I interrupted that brewing feud. “So…what? We’re different people? How?”
Rán turned to me and rolled her eyes. “Do I really have to explain that to you, adon? When we’re done here, the two of you can work that out on your own, but I don’t feel like playing couple’s therapy right now. I just met you, after all.”
“Okay, then what?”
“Up to you. I don’t care what you do with yourself when you’re outside.”
“Okay, whatever.” The other me crossed her arms and huffed a sigh. “So what, then? There’s two of us. What else are we doing here?”
“This was just a synchronization test. You two can go whenever. Really, once you woke up in here, our business was done. That was enough for now”
“So that’s it? I can leave?”
“Um.” I had a thought. “What happens if you try to leave without me?”
Rán laughed. “Probably wouldn’t work. Leave together. It’ll make things easier.”
I looked over at the other me, then nodded. “Okay. If we’re done here, then… let’s go. However that works.” I glanced back to Rán. “I assume we will be seeing you again.”
Rán smiled. “Of course, adon. Until next time.” She waved.
I looked at the other me. She uncrossed her arms and shrugged. I wasn’t quite sure what to do to exit the Pygmalion. So I just tried to concentrate.
I was in darkness again. This time, it was different. Only a few seconds later, there was a loud hissing sound as the door beside me opened. My vision was blinded by a flood of light. A nearby technician ran over and helped me to my feet.
I didn’t feel any different than before.
I certainly wasn’t thinking in any sort of way like inside the Pygmalion. I was back to thinking normally.
I couldn’t tell who— which— I was. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
The technician started asking me a barrage of questions. I had a pounding headache, so instead of answering them, I just walked off. I could deal with that later. There was a lot to deal with later.