Emmet's first crush was another boy.
He had been in high school, when he had first seen the other.
His hair was a deep, chestnut brown, slightly curly and seemingly in a different hairstyle every single day. It was long and flowing, always drifting along behind him and tugged along by the summer breeze.
Emmet had never seen long hair before on a man.
It had awoken something within him, and as soon as he saw the other, Emmet realised that he had wanted his hair to be like that.
He wanted hair like the boy's, and he wanted it to look just as good on him as it did with the other.
Approaching him as easy enough, but broaching the conversation topic of his hair was something else.
Emmet had been keeping his hair short, not allowing it to reach past tickling his shoulders, the heat of the summer usually being too much for the back of his neck to handle. It made the skin itchy and uncomfortably wet with sweat, so he had Aunt Minnie cut it fo
Lila had been an unwanted, lonely child.Her parents had gotten married because their grandparents had demanded it.Her parents had produced children because their grandparents had demanded it.Lila knew that she wasn't liked, that she was a burden, and that she was unloved.It didn't matter to her at all at the time, the notion and reminders of it only rearing their ugly head whenever she messed something up.Only when she wrote with her left hand, only when she walked with her feet pointing inwards, only when she opened her mouth when her mother didn't want to speak, and only when she liked the wrong colours, the wrong flowers, the wrong shapes, was she punished.It didn't matter. She was born left-handed anyway. She had inherited the wonky, mismatched bones of her legs from her father. Her mother was always changing when she thought it was appropriate to speak, and her tastes on what was a good colour, a good
Lila was tired.She was very, very tired.Emmet was put in one of the guest rooms that had been given to her, in the flat above the cafe that she was now living in, and where she would now live for the rest of her life.It was strange, living in a place that was always going to be silent, even when she wasn’t so alone anymore during the evenings.She hadn't been particularly planning to burst into tears, or to have ended up blowing up in that deplorable man's face, but at the same time, she couldn't exactly say that it wasn't to her own benefit.He deserved the pain that he was currently suffering, and if there was any other way for him to finally learn from his mistakes, then she would probably use that method over than just having a breakdown in front of him.It was a shame then that there was only one, pre-determined timeline then, depriving the man of any other kind of learning.She knew that he hated her with a passion an
Emmet, in the throes of the days that ran past him, shifting about with nothing happening, was only sure of several constants.First, he loved Jasper and knew now that he had done one of the worst things imaginable to the man.He shouldn't have tried to isolate him.He shouldn't have obsessed over all the communications in and out of the facility, coveting Jasper as if he had been reduced to a simple object, rather than an individual with his own needs and desires.Those needs and desires human and necessary for survival as well, all of them stripped away from him by Emmet’s selfishness.Human companionship was a necessity, and Emmet had been torturing Jasper.With nothing but the voices in his head, Jasper must have been going insane from the experience, his thoughts whipping him up into a frenzy, with Emmet solely responsible for what had happened next.If he had allowed Jasper any kind of proper company, then his breakdown wo
Jasper laid back there, staring up at the ceiling and the vents above him, the gears in his mind turning as he ran through all the plans that he could possibly use to take out the floating city.Should he lure out another guard and take their equipment from them, or had the Empire fixed up that problem by introducing new measures?It was far too likely that the facility had received more funding, because of the whole time machine being stolen situation, and the additional funding was entirely too present around Jasper.Obviously better cameras, obviously better food filling up the people that surrounded Jasper, the obviously better lights in the corridors, and the massively lower number of dust particles floating around in the air.Jasper desperately would not be able to knock out another guard and use his lying, prone body as a key to break himself out of the facility.The patrol shifts and walking patterns must have changed to ensure maximum secu
It wasn’t Jasper’s fault. It wasn’t his fault. IT WASN’T HIS FAULT! He couldn’t have caused the very future that he had lived in to happen. He couldn’t have. There were far too many variables. There were far too many intricate things that needed to have gone right for an empire to rise up and conquer everything around them. There were far too many things that could have gone wrong with the formation of the grey empire. There was no reason for him to be the cause. There needed to be the failure to maintain a stable climate, there needed to be the flood, there needed to be the gold mine breakthrough, there needed to be the cyborg labour revolution. All of those things were out of Emmet’s control. And besides, hardly anything survived the Great Flood, in terms of books and paper objects. Hardly any evidence of these things survived, most of the information that managed
Blowing up the flying city… Blowing up the flying city… Blowing up the flying city… To do such a thing would result in the deaths of millions, killing probably each and every person within the actual city that made up the floating fortress, and all of the civilians below the city, the civilians who did not have a say in what their government said or did to the outside of world, beholden to the commands of men who they would never see or hear from. Men who had lived and encompassed all their lives without so much of any kind of ratification or permission to do so. Men present because they had won a gamble before they were born, unconsciously even, providing them with the power and strength to wield the spears and swords that were once owned by Gods, commanding millions to fight on behalf of courses they did not know about nor care for, with nary a reason to do what their masters commanded other than the promise of continued life
Lila sat there in bed, stretching out her muscles, before flopping down onto the thick cover and closing her eyes. She sighed once, rubbed her forehead, and stood up again. She walked towards the bathroom and opened the cabinet behind the mirror that sat there above the sink, attached to the ceiling and the wall, pulling out some painkillers, easily popping two out and swallowing them down, one by one, with a glass of water with ease. She turned then to the bathroom blinds, picking up one of the dry cleaning cloths that she had set out to the side, and began leaning over the bath to dry the plastic, waterproof sheets that prevented the entire world from looking inside. Hissing as she opened the curtains, exposing the steamed up room to the wider world, Lila looked away towards the back wall, covered in dark blue, almost glittery tiles, outlined by white – the colours chosen by her desire to leave not a single room with totally white or grey walls.
Emmet waited inside the room that he had spent the entirety of his time, waiting for the lunch that he was sure that Lila would bring. He was in pained, his muscles burning after the exertion that was taking a bath and then walking back to the room. Every moment threw him into the perilous situation of ending up sick. His entire body felt as if it had been crammed into a tiny box, his joints shrinking to tiny, shining, burning points of pain, sparking and alighting through each and every single movement, no matter how slow. He heard his bones crack and pop, like dry branches and tinder ready for a furnace. It also didn’t help that the world almost continuously swayed all around him, the walls circling around his body like vultures before his very eyes, dizzying the senses and making Emmet feel distinctly seasick, as if he were on a little dingy, desperately clinging for his life as he was tossed here and there and everywhere, during a thunderous storm. He had desperately grasped a
“Why’re you sleeping on the floor like that? Come on, get up. You’ll hurt your back doing that,” Doctor Marigold chided, dragging all her bits of heavy machinery around the office space to prepare for her demonstration.Behind her, Lila remained still.“I know that you’re not dead. Come, get up already,” she called out, stepping over a few sheets of paper that she had laid out to grab Lila by the shoulder and heave her up into sitting.The stubborn girl just flopped down again, not opening her eyes.“If you get the fuck up, we can move the flight a week forward so you can stop worrying about it,” Lucy Marigold shouted across the room.Like a rubber band, Lila snapped back up and finally opened her eyes.It had been harder to see the bags below them when they had been closed and Doctor Marigold wondered if she should buy the girl some sleep tablets.“I’m awake,” Li
Yolanda seemed to understand that she needed to back off and stop teasing Gretel, when the other woman's eyes suddenly misted over, and it was if she was no longer a part of this world.She kept the bubbling annoyance within her away from her face, putting on instead a mask of concern as she reached out and poked Gretel's arms, trying to maybe prod her out of her stupor and bring her back from the recesses of her mind.Yolanda had never actually seen somebody collapse inwards to a catatonic state over her own actions.It was interesting to see it all happen and fold out in front of her.She poked Gretel again, touching her in the face lightly to see if that would possibly work to pull the other woman out of her mind and back into the world where she was needed proper.It wouldn't reflect well on her if Gretel didn't wake up within the hour.It didn't feel as
When she awoke, she was sat ready to eat and was dressed just like her mother, in a pastel blouse and a lungi down to the floor.Lila looked down at herself and jumped when she heard rattling, noticing the ten, or so, bangles on each arm and the lines of mehndi that ran down all the way to the hems of her sleeves, resting halfway between her shoulders and elbows. A pin held her blouse shut at the top and a quick once over of her hair, with one of her hands, revealed that it had been styled in a simple bun and adorned with flowers.“This is weirdly romantic,” Lila commented, staring at the lit candles nestled in the variously sized candelabrums set around the circular room.There was no door, but a giant window which led to a balcony outside. There was no ceiling but the walls reaching upwards, all the way up, until they formed a dome in the same shade of dull brown that coated the floor and the giant, round table in the centre.The only dishes
“So, is she finally asleep?” Emmet asked the boy stood behind the counter. He was exceedingly slim for someone surrounded by sugar all day and Emmet could make out the outlines of his spindly elbows through his shirt. His face held a no nonsense, blunt, and almost bored expression. “Yeah, she is. She’s been knocked out on the sofa since I sent her back there,” Kai answered the long haired man in front of him, his hair pulled back by a ribbon matching his eyes before being pulled over his shoulder once more. He looked vain. “Oh good. Don’t tell her that I was involved,” the man asked, putting both his palms up to face Kai. “I’m telling her that you’re a fucking weirdo for that,” was the scowled answer. “No. Seriously, don’t tell her. She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. She’s known my partner for longer that I’ve known him. She doesn’t trust me with him. Why’re you making that face?” Emmet tried to justify himself before giving up
“Are you sure that you’re getting enough sleep?” Kai asked Lila, watching her sway on her feet and clutching the front counter.“Yes,” she gasped, dropping her head into her hands, elbows on the table.“Go and lie down on the sofa. Go to sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you up when I have to leave for college,” Kai instructed her, tapping her on the shoulders and shepherding her towards the office.“… fine,” she conceded, letting Kai move her along towards the back.“You know that this just proves my point,” Kai pointed out, pushing her through the boundary of the door and closing it behind her.“Fine,” she whispered back to him, talking into the silence of the office.She let herself fall over the sofa, draping her upper body over the arm rest and letting her head be cushioned by the pillows. Shuffling a bit over to put her body entirely on the sofa, Lila f
“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now again!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!Now keep on going!”Lila landed each punch, timing her breaths to the count as she moved her fists, dodging underneath the swing that came towards her head, before blocking the second hit that came to her and moving along with the force of the fist that hit her arm.The swinging punching bag forced distance between Lila and Tweedle Dum, and she stepped back to where she was stood before, within the path of the moving bad, to put more distance between him and her.“One! Two! Three! Four! Five!One! Two! Three! Four! Five!”Lila punched the bag once more, landing all of her hits.“Okay, time for a break,” Tweedle Dum announced, grabbing the punching bag and pulling it back to him as Lila moved away from the centre of the room, sitting down on one of the rickety plastic chairs at the side of the room.She took of
“Bitch! Why’d you run off and abandon me like that!?” Lila shouted from behind the counter when Kai finally walked back into the store.She was waving her hands about and wore an apron covered in flour as the single customer in the store, an old man precariously balancing on his cane, slept whilst leaning on the radiator.“I thought that you wanted some bonding time with your family so I left you to do that it private!” Kai answered her, tiptoeing past their unconscious patron, in a combination of whispering and shouting.“They’re hardly my family and you left us in the middle of a public café!” Lila cried, not modulating her voice at all.In the background, the old man began to snore.“But you still talk to them a lot like you do to me, so I let you, and besides, I got about fifty more pages of Good Omens done in Waterstones,” Kai appealed, finally at the counter and opening up the
Gretel and Silver had their fun as he continued to teach her how the interface worked and how he had managed to figure out that the system was an older model from the lack of integration between the screen and the touch pad, and explaining how easily it would potentially be to do so once the technology, as displayed in this device, had been demonstrated and established to work in a functional product."We were working on something like this as well, back in the workshops back home for the company that I was in the research and development department for. We were trying to get our motion sensors to be as small as possible for more commercial and personal use of technology that we could sell to the public and those who couldn't afford the contact computers.We had no idea on how their tech worked, because of trade and company secrets and all, but we managed to piece together a few things by looking at the patents and when we bought a few and m
“Alright, the shop’s free. Why are you actually here?” Lila questioned, crossing her arms and staring down at the tablecloth of Jasper and Emmet’s table.“I’ve got lesson now. I’ll be back in a few hours,” the teenage boy behind Lila announced, picking up a bag that had been hidden behind the counter the entire time and rushing outside.Lila continued to stand there, waiting for a reply.Jasper couldn’t help but notice that she wasn’t meeting either his or Emmet’s eyes.“Are you planning to leave us?” he asked her back.Lila’s fingers dug into the creases of her shirt,” I’m going to be leaving for a trip soon, and I’ll be back as soon as I can. Kai’ll be running the shop and will be looking after things, broadly. He lives here now and I scheduled my leave for when his school term ends so he can take care of things.”“On thi