Sid is in his room. He is hanging out. He is trimming his nails. He is really getting into it. He\u2019s digging at them now with a pair of Lethal-looking nail clippers and a file. He\u2019s having to go in under the cuticle to get any more, and he\u2019s lost his socks under the pile of nail scraps on the floor.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d do something else, he thinks, if there were any options.<\/p>\n
It feels good, sort of, because it\u2019s perfect; because he\u2019s being perfect; because he\u2019s following in exactitude the path that was laid out for him by the hat. But it feels bad because of the agony. The agony is the part he doesn\u2019t like. The agony and the blood.<\/p>\n
He smiles vaguely at the mirror. He looks at the red from his fingers and his toes. He licks his dried-out lips.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK,\u201d he mutters to himself, as he reaches six hundred clips. \u201cOne hundred more and I get a pony!\u201d<\/p>\n
He won\u2019t get a pony.<\/p>\n
\u201cOK,\u201d he mutters, a little later. \u201cOne hundred more and I don\u2019t have to have the spiders in my bed any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
He won\u2019t be able to take them out of the bed. They\u2019ll crawl on him when he tries. He\u2019ll freak out and hyperventilate and fall into bed and wake up in the morning with a spider on his nose.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne hundred more and \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
A lightning-struck Simon-says-playing robot bursts in through his locked, chained door and falls over, melting, on his floor.<\/p>\n
Sid skitters up and braces his back against the wall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t doing anything bad!\u201d he informs the robot.<\/p>\n
The robot drips.<\/p>\n
Sid thinks about rubbing his hands in the hot metal now that he\u2019s got almost all of his nails trimmed. He probably shouldn\u2019t. If my hands are covered in hot metal<\/em>, he says to himself, they might take me away to the hospital. Then I won\u2019t be able to hurt myself any longer.<\/em><\/p>\n He wears a colorless hat. It\u2019s a colloid of mucous and yarn.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just the nature of the world,\u201d Sid tells the robot. His certainty is wavering. He\u2019s not sure why his certainty is wavering. The pain in his fingers and toes is getting louder and he\u2019s feeling a little dizzy and unsure. \u201cWe\u2019re too attached to things! So we hurt ourselves. It\u2019s certainly not anything that is against dormitory regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n He is trying to frantically justify himself to the dying robot but there is no point in it because he is not prefixing any of his justifications with \u2018Simon says\u2019.<\/p>\n He can\u2019t make sense of his own thoughts any longer anyway.<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d he realizes, after a moment. \u201cGuys.\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019re standing in a creepy circle around him. He swallows a time or two. The first time it goes down the wrong pipe. He gives them a faint smile.<\/p>\n He sits down.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t like it when they\u2019re there. The comfort of knowing that he\u2019s doing the right thing goes away when there are people standing around him in a creepy circle and their yellow hats, staring at him with their golden eyes. But on the bright side he doesn\u2019t seem to get any more<\/em> hurt while they\u2019re there.<\/p>\n \u201cI think,\u201d he says, \u201cUm. I think. Maybe, um, some ointment.\u201d<\/p>\n He nods towards the medicine cabinet. He\u2019d get it out but there\u2019s a melting robot in the way.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a Simon-says playing robot,\u201d says Emily.<\/p>\n He startles vigorously and scuttles back along the floor and the movement of his toes on the ground makes them feel like they\u2019re on fire.<\/p>\n \u201cYou spoke!\u201d he says, although he is too busy not screaming in pain to actually finish the word \u2018spoke.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI got an amplifier,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cA Simon says playing robot,\u201d he says. His eyelid twitches. \u201cCan they do that now? Simon says don\u2019t melt. Don\u2019t die, robot.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t work that way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Sid says. He giggles a little. He is crying now. He wishes they weren\u2019t standing there staring at him. But he thinks that if they weren\u2019t standing there staring at him that maybe tonight would finally be his chance to eat the fermented fish heads he\u2019s been burying.<\/p>\n \u201cHey,\u201d Emily says.<\/p>\n She touches his shoulder. He tries not to flinch away from her.<\/p>\n \u201cListen,\u201d he says. \u201cListen. I know you mean well. But you don\u2019t have to \u2014 you can\u2019t just go around throwing burning robots through my door and standing in creepy circles around me. You shouldn\u2019t stop me like this. I\u2019m a sacrifice.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Emily gives him a look.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world asked,\u201d Sid says. He\u2019s pleading. \u201cI put on the hat and I heard it. It said that there had to be someone to suffer for it or nothing would make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n And he is saying: don\u2019t go. Please go. Don\u2019t go. Tell me I don\u2019t have to do this. Please don\u2019t tell me, please don\u2019t, don\u2019t tell me I didn\u2019t have to do this.<\/em><\/p>\n All the confidence is gone from him in the face of those golden eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat would it even mean if this wasn\u2019t right?\u201d Sid says. \u201cYou\u2019re spoiling it. It was probably going to happen tonight. It was probably going to tip over the edge and make everything better, tonight. I bet.\u201d<\/p>\n He curls in on himself.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease go away.\u201d<\/p>\n And this is a night of many paths.<\/p>\n It might have been here, in a different timeline \u2014 a different conversation, a different path, or most likely just Sid alone \u2014 that he would have thought to experiment with asphyxiation, and gone a bit too far and died.<\/p>\n It might have been here \u2014 all the same rules applying \u2014 that Emily would have broken the Simon-says-playing robot\u2019s steel mind. She might have been making a point to Sid \u2014 in a different conversation, a different path, a different story \u2014 that pure motivations and pure outcomes are unrelated, and offered something like \u201cSimon says not to do the things that Simon\u2019s saying.\u201d<\/p>\n On this particular track, though, those things don\u2019t happen. The Keepers\u2019 House showed up to stop him. The robot is hit by lightning, and it dies. There are no fish heads in this <\/em>timeline, no asphyxiation, and no perverted, awful games of Simon says.<\/p>\n Just:<\/p>\n \u201cGo away<\/em>,\u201d Sid howls, and he glares at them, and it\u2019s too much; he cannot lay his eyes on them, they are dispersing, they are slipping away like ghosts, they leave him in his misery, along with his blood and his mucous hat and his spiders and the quivering clear jelly that is his eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was so awful,\u201d Emily tells Navvy Jim, later, and he strokes her shoulder, while Eldri arranges for his ruined robot to be hauled back from the Lethal halls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sid is in his room. He is hanging out. He is trimming his nails. He is really getting into it. He\u2019s digging at them now with a pair of Lethal-looking nail clippers and a file. He\u2019s having to go in under the cuticle to get any more, and he\u2019s lost his socks under the pile […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"series":[47],"class_list":["post-5360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-storm-that-saw-itself-chapter-5","series-the-storm-that-saw-itself"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Hat_5_nobg.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6124,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions\/6124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5360"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}