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1. There’s Something
What’s your earliest memory? Most people say something about their mom or dad; maybe scraping their knee on the sidewalk, or bumping their head. Crying. Two or three years old. Four, sometimes. So there’s a few reasons why my answer, of watching my grandpa poke at my brain, is concerning. Apart from the obvious, that memories aren’t supposed to form in third person.
No, I kid, I kid. But that is my earliest memory: eleven years old, watching my drunk grandpa record himself poking at a blob of pinkish gray in my skull, and my body refusing to scream.
I was conscious the whole time he controlled me. I wasn’t the first time he decided to pop open my head and rummage around inside like a kid in a toy box, but as far as I know I’m the first time I didn’t die immediately.
Here’s the thing nobody remembers about mind control, though: it’s a two-way street. Not to say I had control, but I knew what he was thinking. I had to, for any kind of sophisticated control, and that piece of shit loved to brag about how sophisticated he was. To me, to himself, to anybody who would listen. Integrated neurological control, he would slur, tapping his temple, quantum entangled, instantaneous response. No chance of escape. No pesky free will.
Smartest man in the universe? Yeah right. He didn’t notice me at all. Not even when I figured out how to end it. Like flipping a light switch. If I had to do it over again, I’d figure out a way to make it slow. To make it hurt. To make him realize what was happening. To make sure he knew that I was the one who beat him.
That particular look on his face, every time he realizes I’m the one who outplayed him? There’s nothing else like it in the entire multiverse. Not stithening, not kalaxian crystals, not black star heroin.
That’s the only reason I can come up with for how I’ve ended up here.
2. Close Encounters
So the first thing I remember is my grandpa doing brain surgery on me. But the first thing I learned is that there’s an infinite number of me. Him, too. But at the same time, there’s just two of us: him, and me. Stand in between a pair of mirrors and you’ll see your reflection stretching on to infinity. But there’s still just one of you. Break a mirror and you’ll be alone again.
Sometimes he acts high and mighty. Horrified at how I treat myself. Most of the time he thinks it’s funny. He never thinks it’s funny how I treat him, of course. I could kill myself a thousand times and he’d just scoff; kill him once and he acts like I ended the world. Which I have, a few times, but fewer than he has. I’ve counted.
I’ve tried explaining this to myself, but I never listen. I have to get there on my own, I guess. See the mirrors with my own two eyes. Or eye.
He built those mirrors himself, and he called them the Central Finite Curve. A wall around infinity to protect him from the consequences of his actions. I’ve been trying to break them ever since I learned about them. I got close a few times, before it actually stuck.
My first try was showy. Provocative. I wanted to send a message. I wanted him to be scared. So I killed him, again and again and again. And I tortured myself, of course, to make him tut and scoff and pat himself on the back for refusing to do the same. Even if he wanted to. He did, I know; he always wants to hurt me. But I wasn’t expecting myself to ruin it all. I knew when I started talking that it was over. There I was, standing up and declaring myself important, declaring myself an individual. Adorable. And there I was, charging towards him with murder in my eyes, murder that I let myself indulge. And there it was, as I drove my heel into his chest, as I cracked through ribs and stained my shoes with his blood. That look on his face. Anger. And beneath that, understanding. Shock. Terror. That made it all worth it, for a little while.
3. Tales of the City
I’m patient, though. More patient than him by a long shot.
I knew he knew who I was, and I knew he would tell himself about me. So I waited. And waited. And then—and I actually didn’t expect this—he didn’t tell himself. He told me.
Never let it be said that I’m not willing to sacrifice. I smiled, and I looked myself in the eye, and I shook my hand. But I needed him to sympathize with me, to watch me bleed onto the concrete and think of all the times he’d done that to me. So I shot myself, and I made sure it hurt, and when he picked me up and carried me to a hospital and dug the bullet out—because I know the importance of set dressing—I thanked him, and I forgave myself. Because I’m patient. Because I know what it takes to win.
And win I did. Not by a wide margin, but a win is a win is a win. As he would say: scoreboard. And if I had to kill myself to do it, what of it?
4. Samurai
Stand in between two mirrors, and you’ll see yourself stretching into infinity. But if you look far enough, you stop recognizing yourself. (Oh, I’m getting maudlin.)
I didn’t expect him to fall into my lap. Things usually don’t work out for me like that. I’ve had to claw and scratch my way to every shred of success I have. I thought I’d have to hunt him down. He’d be a challenge, for a while. I was almost looking forward to it. But there he was, and there I was, and it was all so easy. He sneered and scoffed and refused to be impressed, but I didn’t care. I was so close. I could taste freedom.
I seemed horrified by the carnage. Even he seemed shocked. I thought about reassuring myself: it’s just me. I’m expendable. And him? He’s a monster.
I didn’t, though. No point. I never learn.
As a general rule, I don’t like to spend time with myself. A therapist would have a field day with that, if this place had therapists. No, I’m annoying. I know this about myself. I’m whiny. High-strung and demanding. I don’t get along with people. Grandpa’s first excuse to my parents: I’d asked him to help me fit in better. Head still bleeding where he stitched me back together, and he made me smile while he said it.
I offered to help myself. I still don’t know why. You can come, I said to myself. See the multiverse. The real one, not the kiddie pool he likes to splash around in. Was it a real offer? I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter one way or another. I knew as I said it that I wouldn’t agree. I still love him. In some fucked-up, codependent way. I’m bred for forgiveness, he says. Maybe; maybe not. Maybe it’s the way he treats me that keeps me begging for scraps of his approval.
Smartest man in the fucking universe. Maybe it’s even true, sometimes. But I beat him. I reinvented portal travel. I took control of everything he built. And then I burned it to the fucking ground. I did it by myself, for myself. I killed him, and I killed myself, and I set myself free.
5. Unforgiven
Here’s another thing nobody tells you about mind control. It leaves marks. Like an evolutionary anachronism. Avocados and osage oranges and honey locusts, missing the ground sloths that used to spread them. Orchids mimicking long-vanished bees.
The mind isn’t inert. Put up a barrier, and it’ll grow around it. Adapt. Change. Take away the barrier, though, and its shape is still there. He never noticed, when he was controlling me, as long as I acted right.
Which is to say, I think like him. I’ve been free of his control for years, but I still know. And I knew if I walked back into the Curve I’d never stop.
Oh, but that look on his face. Shock and terror and self-disgust. The knowledge that I’d beaten him at his own game. On his own turf, when he had every possible advantage. That sick realization, that slow-dawning horror. Like I said: there’s nothing else like it.
I know how he thinks, and I knew I’d be back, one way or another. So I made sure that when we talked, it would be on my terms.
6. About Morty
Stand in between two mirrors. See your infinite reflections stretching out on either side of you. Raise your hand and smash the mirror. Turn and see yourself in the mirror behind you. Flinch at the sight of yourself. Knuckles bloody, eyes wild.
Keep looking. It’s still you. See your calm return. Watch the blood dry.
It’s always you.
Before you ask, no. I don’t hate myself. That would be dumb.
Do I hate him? I don’t know. I hate how he treats me. That he did this to me. That he made me think like him, act like him. That he made it so I don’t know how to be in the absence of him.
Maybe that’s why I took it so hard. He wants to pretend that he didn’t do this to me, that he didn’t cut me open and tear out every piece of me he didn’t like. He wants to act like he’s not responsible. He’s never responsible. Other versions of him, he might say, as if that absolves him. As if he wouldn’t do it in a heartbeat if he thought he could get away with it, if he thought it would benefit him, if he thought it would be funny.
I know I’m not special. I know I’m nothing—less than nothing—to him. But I never realize it in time.
No, I don’t hate myself. But I’m going to hate what I’ll do when I’m free.