TRISTAN
CN
SUNDAY, AUGUST 14
So, Tristan, how do you think you’ll kill me?
Slowly.
We know a knife is out. Unless you want to try it again.
I have no interest in being that close to you.
You wouldn’t technically have to be, but I see your point, it’s very intimate. A very sexy death.
And therefore inappropriate for you.
Lol
If only you meant that.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 23
You know, now that I’ve met him, I can see that I was wrong about your father. I thought it was simpler than it was, more easily defined. All those little traumas you’re so desperate to block out from your past. At first it seemed so unoriginal, straightforward. But it’s quite complicated between you, isn’t it? Love can be so deeply twisted.
I mean, I was right, technically, in about 99 different ways, particularly as to the nature of your victimhood. But I was also a bit wrong, so this is me being sorry about that.
I doubt you’ve ever been genuinely sorry about anything.
Not true. I’m sorry I killed Parisa.
You mean you’re sorry you let her trick you into killing her.
That too, but no, I’m actually sorry I did it. Well, I didn’t kill her, that’s not fair. She made that choice, I didn’t influence her into doing it.
Semantics.
Yeah, but semantics are kind of important here, right? Like, they’re relevant to this specific conversation. I want you to know I didn’t convince her to do it. I just . . . peeled away her reasons for not doing it.
Semantics. And bad ones at that.
Right, well, the point is I’m sorry. Don’t tell anyone but I miss her a little bit.
. . .
What? I like Parisa. She’s fun.
She’s literally a sadist.
Tristan, please. Don’t act like that’s not your EXACT idea of fun.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1
Did you hear the news?
You’re still alive, apparently. Bummer.
LINK: EDEN WESSEX FINDS LOVE WITH DANISH ROYAL.
Is this supposed to make me . . . jealous?
Of course not. I know for a fact that guy’s too short for you.
What is the point of sending me this? Obviously Eden wasn’t going to sit around pining for me.
Strange jump, don’t you think? From you to royalty
Unless it’s an issue of class solidarity and all that, in which case hello? I’m clearly available
Fuck you etc
Right, so on and so forth, go on
Eden’s progressivism was always performative. Obviously, seeing as she’s apparently trying to kill me now that I can’t make Uncle Louis uncomfortable at the dinner table.
Is she trying to kill you? Oh Eden, where is your dignity. Obsession is not a cute look
Says the guy still texting me
How did you know she’s trying to kill you? I mean I obviously knew that, but I wasn’t aware you did.
I asked the Society who was behind all the attacks. Not surprising there’s Wessex money involved.
Does that necessarily mean Eden?
Almost certainly.
Do you intentionally look for homicidal streaks in your partners? Or is it just, like, a fun bonus
Wait, nevermind, I hear you’re with Rhodes now. Though she’s not NOT a murderer, so . . . I think I’ve made my point
Don’t tell me that actually bothered you. I told you there’d be a bomb involved.
You can’t have it both ways, Tristan. Either Rhodes is a saint who’s still trapped in time or she’s back because she’s just as fucked up as the rest of us
You’re really saying there’s no difference between you and Rhodes?
Oh, hello! Funny seeing you here. No romantic Saturday plans, I take it?
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11
Does she know you’re still thinking about me?
Yes. She knows I haven’t decided on a murder weapon yet.
Did she suggest a nuclear bomb?
10:10 P.M.
OH COME ON THAT WAS FUNNY
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21
Varona has a theory that you’re using Reina to influence people over airwaves
Sorry, who is this?
3:45 P.M.
I’m allowed to joke, Caine. And for the record, I’m not using Reina. She’s using me.
6:15 P.M.
Ha. I doubt that.
8:21 P.M.
Why would I lie to you?
. . .
Fine, why would I lie to you about this, specifically? I have no interest in world domination. Reina’s the one with the god complex.
You’re really just going along with whatever she wants?
My desires are unfulfillable and tiny. Hers have scope. I admire her, in a sense.
One (1) sense?
Well, she’s going to fail. But that’s going to happen whether I help her or not, and it’s not like I have anything more pressing to attend to.
There’s the matter of your death, of course, but I’m in no hurry for that.
Is there anyone you actually believe in?
I can tell there’s a ring of cynicism to that question, Tristan, but I’m being perfectly sincere when I tell you that you have everything all wrong. I believe in Reina. I believe in you. I even believe in Rhodes, in my own silly way, or I wouldn’t have given you the information I gave you in order to help bring her back. But believing in someone doesn’t change who they are. No matter how many times you run the simulation, the odds remain the same.
You said there was no chance Rhodes would come into her power and you were wrong.
No, the LIBRARY said that, Tristan. But in fairness it has the sentience of a machine.
What does that mean?
It means the archives are “alive” the same way artificial intelligence is “alive.” It tracks us. It maybe (probably) thinks in some rudimentary way. But its information about the world doesn’t come from its own intrinsic existence—it comes from data that we supply.
And?
And that information is imperfect but it’s still not as imperfect as humanity. In nature, things that don’t fit the pattern die. Evolution is a code, it determines that the life cycle of any species is a matter of pattern recognition. But humans don’t let other humans die even when they should—even when it means disproportionate resources to keep them alive. Or they kill each other off in direct opposition to the codes of survival, based on something as irrelevant as skin color or which thing they speak to in the sky. Whether a person lives or dies is almost completely arbitrary.
I’ve got a theory.
You just spin nonsense out of thin air to distract people from the fact that you’ve got absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Oh Tristan, none of us have any idea what we’re talking about, the whole thing is a fool’s errand. In any case, the point I’m trying to make is that of course the archives can still be wrong. Of course there’s one chance out of a million where you actually manage to kill me or that Rhodes does something impressive all on her own.
There’s at least one universe out there where Atlas Blakely killed someone to save four other lives and that’s precisely why he’s looking for it.
But does it matter?
Does anything matter?
See? Now you get it.
You’re so full of shit.
2:37 A.M.
Do you think the library dreams?
Something keeping you up, Caine?
4:13 A.M.
I don’t know.
I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that.
Oh, your memories of me are clouded with silly things like how you think I’m a murderer or whatever your problem with me is. Of course there are things I don’t know.
My main problem with you is that you’re too arrogant to function
Just arrogant ENOUGH to function, actually
Every now and then I suddenly remember you’re a youngest child and it starts to make a lot more sense
Oh, don’t equate me with Bella. That’s just rude.
I’m not joking when I tell you to stay the fuck away from my sisters
No <3
7:44 A.M.
Jesus, I’m joking. What do you think I’m going to do with them? They’re CHILDREN, Tristan. They’re INFANTS.
I’m glad you’ve noticed.
It’s very interesting, actually, seeing you through their eyes. Are you aware that on some level they think you’ve abandoned them?
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30
7:53 A.M.
It’s only natural that they’d think that. I left a long time ago. They were actual children then.
You knew what your father was like and you still left them?
3:21 A.M.
Tristan, I’m baiting you. It’s our love language. The truth is: you don’t have to feel guilty. And come on. Be honest. You don’t.
Why should you feel guilty? You knew they’d be safe. He’s different with them than he is with you. And they still have their mother. The nonsense you let yourself carry around, I didn’t realize it was so richly imagined. They’re fine, Tristan. They’re more than fine. They’re certainly better off than you.
Why the fuck would you even say that then?
Because I’m a sadist, Tristan, what do you want from me?
And in case it bears repeating. You don’t have to feel bad that you left a situation that was killing you.
It wasn’t killing me.
Tristan. I’ve felt what you feel. You do not need to lie to me.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1
3:12 P.M.
I think I made a mistake.
Probably. Probably several. But who among us can’t say that?
Which part would you undo if you could?
Which strand of the multiverse would I follow, you mean?
Fine, if you prefer that thought experiment.
I don’t believe in the multiverse
Not even if I could prove it existed?
Okay, I believe in it as a theoretical possibility, but I don’t BELIEVE in it. We don’t get to undo our mistakes. We just make new ones and try to make the next ones more interesting
Indulge me anyway. Which moment do you change?
I know which answer you want me to give, but I still think the whole thing is pointless
Which answer do you think I want you to give?
Oh, I don’t know. Influencing your choice of beverage. Killing Parisa. It really doesn’t matter now
I could make it matter.
Oh, right, because you and Rhodes are making your own universes, I forgot
Is it really so hard for you to believe that I didn’t choose her over you? I just chose NOT YOU, which is extremely distinct. And frankly a matter of self-preservation
Is it?
Or did you make a mistake?
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11
1:15 A.M.
What if I did Atlas’s experiment?
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you’ll land among the stars
I truly, deeply, fucking hate you
I know right!!! lmao same
Answer the question.
Since when do you care what I think? According to you I’ll be dead soon
I think we both know you can’t resist a chance to wax poetic about why I’m wrong and you’re right and humanity is terrible and this is all just the universe’s latest episode in its series of forthcoming doom
Humanity isn’t terrible, it’s just not worth trying to fix or change, which is honestly the second time I’ve had this exact conversation today, but I can see that this is just as pointless. What’s the question?
Scroll up, fuckwit.
Right, should you do it, should you not . . . I don’t care, Tristan, this whole thing is exhausting
Wow.
You’re going to do the experiment! I know it! You know it! Atlas Blakely knows it! Rhodes knows it! And on a more relevant note, even Her Divinity knows it, because Varona left yet another voicemail trying to persuade her to join the fun. So I think YOU can see how this is all a very silly exercise of moral hypotheticals.
Why is morality so silly? It’s only the basis for society, give or take some innate human dignity or whatever it is we all seem to care about that you can’t figure out
Oh, you’re so grumpy. It’s so cute.
You’re right. I’m a total masochist. What’s wrong with me? Why am I here?
It’s a mystery!!! I love it!! I can’t wait to see how you decide to kill me
Anyway, I know what you’re telling yourself, which is that the experiment isn’t inherently bad, and you’re right.
So you think I should do it.
I think you’re going to do it, which is extremely well-established, but of course I don’t think you SHOULD. What does Parisa think?
Right, because I definitely asked for her opinion.
If you haven’t you should. Either she thinks you should do it, in which case you should absolutely not do it, or she thinks it’s a terrible idea, in which case she’s right
I believe you may have inadvertently revealed your stance on the issue, Socrates
Oh 100000% my answer is don’t do it. But you’re going to! So you can see how this is a waste of my international minutes.
How is your plan for world domination going?
Pointlessly once you open up another strand of the multiverse, but try telling the Goddess that. She simply won’t hear it, so off to the Americas I go
Why American politics?
Why coffee and not tea? Why is the sky blue?
I can’t wait to kill you.
Have you come up with the weapon yet? Or will you simply transport yourself to a world where I was never born? I imagine there are a few of those hanging around somewhere under the multiverse’s sofa cushions
Why do you think I shouldn’t do it?
Let me count the ways.
. . .
That was meant to be poetic. I’m not going to literally count the ways. I’d be here all day
What else do you have to do?
Fair point. Fine. My main reason is that you’re always someone else’s weapon. You’re Atlas Blakely’s. You’re your father’s. You’re Eden Wessex’s. You’re Parisa’s. The list goes on. I think the main reason you want so badly to be in love with Rhodes is because you think she’d never use you
By that logic, can you blame me for preferring anyone but you?
Tristan I am so exhausted by this argument, can we skip it for now? You can always recount it later when you’re strangling me or whatever it is you plan to do. Pushing me off a cliff sounds easy. And I have it on good authority (Reina’s, so maybe not THAT good) that I’m incredibly easy to lure.
You’re magic. Too many ways you’d survive that fall
I just got chills!!! Talk murder to me you cheeky minx
You know what’s honestly ironic?
TELL me. I’m dying to hear it. x
You won’t kill me, Callum. You can’t. Someday I’m going to kill you and you’re going to be completely shocked because no matter how powerful you are, you can’t actually DO anything.
Varona’s figured it out, you know. You’re using technomantic transmitters to influence the actual mob. You’re fixing an entire country’s election, and not just one candidate, but every single one. You’re going to overturn an entire system of government and yet, SOMEHOW, you’re too afraid to find out if the universe might be a little bit bigger than you think it is.
You’re too scared to be disappointed. You’re afraid to be dwarfed, to be wrong.
And you’re terrified of a world without me because you know that once I’m gone you’ll be alone.
I think you made a lot of points there, Caine. Some of them really quite valid.
Of course that’s all you have to say.
What do you want me to tell you? Of course the universe is bigger than I am. I don’t make decisions about the universe.
Right, Reina does.
Yes, Reina does, and I go along with them because I grasp that to every action there’s an equal and opposite blah blah blah and it’ll come back and smack her in the face because the only thing I actually understand is equilibrium and a general cosmic comings-around
But what do YOU want to hear? I genuinely have no idea
Can you influence me over text messaging?
Why, do you feel influenced? No, you’re right, let’s not go down that rabbit hole. I don’t know the answer but I don’t think so. This is Varona’s network and strange as it is to say it feels unsportsmanlike to fuck with it. Plus I can’t do the same thing over webcasts that I can over television, Reina and I’ve already tried. Presumably the magical infrastructure is weaker or something, or maybe it’s stronger, I don’t know. Even if she figures it out it doesn’t matter.
Right, because nothing matters.
Right! You get it!
What if I refuse to believe that’s true?
Well what does it mean to matter, Caine? What does that look like?
Mattering?
Yes, mattering. Purpose. Meaning. What about the world suggests to you that those things can actually be met? There are no happy billionaires. I should know, considering my father’s one of them. People who claim to be happy get forgotten within one generation, maybe two. So what are you actually aiming for, here, Tristan, because to me it seems not only pointless but impossible
Isn’t this what it is to be human? To want to matter? To have a purpose?
Let me ask you something. If your purpose was to open the multiverse, what would happen afterward?
What does that mean?
Assuming I don’t beat you to the punch and kill you before you kill me, you’re going to live another . . . what, fifty years or so? Say you open a portal to the multiverse tomorrow, or next week, or whenever it is your little team of physicists decides to give it a go. Then what?
Then I’ll have opened a portal to the multiverse.
Right. But will your father love you? Will your sisters miss you? Will the archives stop trying to kill you? Will you be able to stop thinking about me? Will you finally have the answer to the questions you’ve always wanted to ask? Will you understand why you had to go through so much pain just to be here today, just to exist? If you can prove that you matter in some concrete, un-theoretical way, will you finally believe it’s true?
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13
12:32 A.M.
No
But I’m going to do it anyway.
. . .
The odd thing about the reading room was how dark it was; the significance of time always seemed to vanish, hours passing like minutes or breaths. Tristan looked at the time stamp on his last message and realized he’d been sitting there for ages. Despite Nico and Gideon’s comings and goings throughout the evening, neither he nor Libby had moved.
“Who are you texting?” Libby murmured through a yawn. She lifted her head from her page of notes and looked impossibly familiar, like herself from a lifetime or two ago. Like this was a moment from a warped sense of retrospect, in a time and place that never actually existed, or simply hadn’t yet.
“Hm? No one.” Tristan put his phone aside, rubbing his eyes beneath the lenses of his glasses. He needed a new prescription. Everything was starting to make his eyes hurt. It felt strange and also somehow apt to be succumbing to decay while quietly planning something of this magnitude.
“You’re sure,” he said slowly. “We could do it without Reina?” Libby slid him a glance and he added pointedly, “Hypothetically speaking.”
“Hypothetically yes, I’m sure. And anyway, I don’t really think we can trust her. Especially now, given what she’s up to.” Libby tossed him a rueful smile. “If I’d had to put money on which of us would try to take over the world, I really wouldn’t have picked Reina.”
“I would have,” said Nico, abruptly dropping a pile of books on the table. “And as for hypotheticals,” he said. “I’m done with that. Let’s say, realistically speaking, that we know what we’re doing—”
“Brief interjection: no, you don’t,” said Gideon from where he was carefully returning books to the shelves of the painted room.
“Right, correction, we don’t. But that’s why it’s an experiment,” Nico insisted, plopping into the chair beside Libby. “And if you’re right about the vengeful archives, we’re already nearly five months into a possible six. So, either we kill someone tonight—Gideon exempted,” he offered genially, to which Gideon tipped an invisible hat, “or we do the experiment. And if it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work.”
Libby shifted instantly away. “If it doesn’t work we only unleash the power of the sun,” she muttered. “Very casual, Varona, you’re right.”
“Please, we’ve got more control than that.” He beckoned to Gideon, who stood just beyond the table as if uncertain whether he should enter the sacred space of their eternal hypothetical. “Have a sit, Sandman, you’re making everyone nervous.”
Tristan’s screen lit up with a message. He flipped it below the table, glancing down to see the response to his first real voicing of his intentions. I’m going to do it anyway, he’d confessed to Callum, and his pulse skittered across his chest as he surreptitiously read Callum’s reply.
I know. And I genuinely wish you omnipotence.
Tristan looked up again to find that Gideon had noticed him checking his phone, though Gideon had glanced hastily elsewhere. Tristan slid the phone back into his pocket, wondering why his heart was thudding so profoundly in his chest. As if he’d been caught.
(Tristan already knew what he would do when the time came. Not a knife, not a gun, not a weapon. He didn’t need one. Wasn’t that the point of it all, discovering that he could break something on his own, change it into something else? He’d simply dismantle the thing in Callum’s chest pumping blood to his brain, which Tristan hesitated to call a heart. He would flip it like a light switch, on to off, easy, simple, no pause for doubt, no mess, no guilt. He had the feeling that Callum would laugh, or maybe even thank him.)
“I think,” Nico continued, “we’re overthinking this.”
“Impossible,” said Gideon, who’d stepped closer, hovering beside Tristan’s chair.
“He’s right,” said Tristan, who realized he hadn’t spoken in a while.
“Fine. Rhodes is overthinking this.” Nico patted her hair as she swatted him away, missing by an inch. “So let’s just, I don’t know, stop.”
“Engrave it on my headstone,” Libby muttered. “Let’s just, I don’t know, stop.”
“I’m putting ‘brb’ on my headstone,” Nico said, then snapped his fingers. “Gideon, you’re in charge of that.”
“I’m aware.” Gideon sounded wry, too close. Tristan had the sense that Libby was right, that Gideon knew something, knew many things. He didn’t seem like a threat, but that was somehow worse. The idea that he would see everything and not try to intervene. Tristan felt unmoored by it. Destabilized.
“We should do it soon,” Nico said. “Tomorrow, even.”
“Even if I agreed with you, we’d need rest,” Libby said. “Food.”
“Dalton,” Tristan pointed out.
“The point is the intention,” Nico argued. “If, say, Dalton could be convinced by Parisa, or possibly, I don’t know, via Tristan’s seductive wiles—”
“Right,” said Tristan, noticing Libby’s disgruntled shift in her chair. “Very plausible.”
“—then we’d bacchanal tomorrow, sleep for forty-eight hours, and make a new fucking world.” Nico punched the air in a way that Tristan found hugely inappropriate for the time of night it happened to be. “The point is the arrow. We need to decide.” He paused for a moment, almost pleading. “We need to just do it.”
Libby pushed the book away from her, locking eyes with Tristan. “Please,” she said. “Tell him again, because I really can’t.”
He felt Gideon shifting behind him. Unclear what Gideon was seeing, or thought he saw.
Do you trust me? Libby had asked him that. But exactly how far did trust go?
(“Mr. Caine, this is Ford again, sorry to bother you but have you heard from Dr. Blakely? We’ve yet to receive any reports about the new archivist. The board of governors has reserved their right to a call for a vote of no confidence for now, but it’s only a matter of—”)
Tristan’s phone felt heavy in his pocket. He thought about texting Callum, just for an element of absurd, something to loosen the apprehension in his chest that was so obviously misplaced, so pointless. A vestige of a prior lifetime, one riddled with fear.
What if I fail, to which Callum’s response would surely be Oh darling, but what if you fly?
“Hypothetically,” said Tristan. “I might agree with Varona.”
Either there was more to this world or there was nothing, in which case Libby would stop looking at him like that, and eventually the pain would pass. Eventually.
The table shook as Nico slammed down a hand.
“Boom,” he said euphorically, or prophetically. “Yes. Done.”