Chapter 8: Such a Strange Vibration

“I have an idea,” Sammaël said, to Sierra’s fascinated horror. That wasn’t because Sierra was against the idea of ideas, but because Sammaël had said it with the same excitement and inflection as mad scientists might talk about their new death laser. Still, she wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, so she raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question. “So, if there really is someone hunting me,” Sammaël continued, “they are doing so by focusing on this body.” It waved generally at itself. 

Now that they’d had a minute and the raw sensation of freshly-shaven face was ebbing away, it had been easier to pretend like the body hadn’t really been there, to distance itself from it a little bit. Sadly, thinking about it too much made every uncomfortable sensation edge its way back into its mind like a cat pushing itself through a barely open door. It pushed the strange feelings to the back of its mind, and continued. 

“Additionally, I believe whatever is doing this, can only recognize me by the tether to my host body. So, I will simply… try to inhabit the body itself more,” it continued. “Reduce the link between my real body and this one as much as I can. Step inside the proverbial television screen, as it were.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Sierra asked. “What if you can’t go back?”

“I will not let that happen,” Sammaël replied. “The tether can not be broken by anything or anyone but myself. But I can make it so imperceptible it might as well not be there.”

Sierra paced around the small motel room, her hands in her pockets. It was clear to Sammaël she was worried about something. “Will there be any… side effects?” 

“None I can immediately foresee. My experience,” it said, “should be no different than it has been. If anything, we should be considerably safer for the immediate future.” Sierra nodded, but clearly wasn’t convinced yet. “It will not require much. Only a brief moment of concentration. You can stay here with me if you like.” It sat cross-legged on the bed, back against the wall. 

“I… Do you want me to stay?” Sierra asked. Sammaël looked at her for a moment.

“I would like that, yes.” 

“Then say that,” she said with a grin, and sat on the foot of the bed, also crossing her legs. “If I can help at all, even if it’s just by being here, then I’d like you to speak your mind.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Sammaël said, smiling faintly. 

“Well, I mean,” Sierra mused, “if I can do something to avoid getting shot again… I wouldn’t be opposed to preventing my own death again, you know?” She laughed sheepishly, then reached out and put a hand on Sammaël’s. “But I am here for you.”

With a grateful smile, Sammaël nodded, then closed its eyes. It reached out to its body, still out there in space, the dark side of the moon, a shadow the size of a planet, skulking. It was strange, like watching itself in a mirror but… not. Its consciousness — not to mention its abilities — were extremely limited like this, but that was okay. 

Existence, for a creature like Sammaël, was not something that needed to be theorized. It was not just a certainty of feeling, or a thought experiment. “I think therefore I am,” was the kind of thing mortal creatures needed to reconcile their insecurities about the universe. By contrast, Sammaël had proof of its own existence. Its own tangible reality was something that could be spun out like silk thread, molded into a human brain if needed.

And for now, it stretched that silk thread to its limits. Nothing but itself would ever see it, so infinitesimally thin it might as well be said to not exist at all, and yet with a tensile strength that could cut a star in half. It kept as much of its consciousness inside the body as it could. That was the main goal, after all, despite how much of it there really still was out there. It was like trying to pour a drop of water into a glass with a pipette the size of a skyscraper. But it managed. It was painstaking, filing away at the thread until the Sammaël was as much of a singular entity as possible, without severing the connection entirely. 

“Sam?”

The sound of its name was strange to hear like this, like someone was talking to it from the other side of thick glass. It realized it had deliberately taken that distance from its own body again, and that it did have to slip back into the body of what had once been Abraham Douglas again. 

“Sam?!”

Sammaël realized it was putting things off. Sure, it wanted to go back to being around Sierra; she made it feel safe. But that also meant going back into that body, and the thought made its skin crawl, the thought of running its hand over its jaw and feeling the rough stubble, of looking down and seeing the rough hands. Of seeing that face in the mirror. 

“Sam!!”

It opened its eyes. That was strange. It had expected to see Sierra at the foot of the bed, where it had left her, but she wasn’t. It didn’t know where Sierra was, because it was staring at the underside of the bed. Slowly, it became aware of the pain in its arms and relaxed. Immediately, its hands were pried away, something that was more difficult than it should be.

“Sammaël!” Sierra’s voice came from somewhere to its left. It looked up at her. She was standing over it as she tried to keep it from digging its nails any further into its arms and shoulders. “What’s wrong?! What’s happening?”

“I—” it said, and the sound of its own voice was like a sledgehammer to the brain. No longer something to be ignored, it physically hurt to hear even a single syllable pass through its own lips. This was wrong, on so many levels, and there was nothing it could do to alleviate it. 

Well, that wasn’t true. It slowly started to pull away from the body again, and realized there was nowhere to go. Not without disrupting the work it had done to hide itself. It faced the choice between painting a target on its own — and Sierra’s — back, or… this. It was not an easy choice to make. Feeling her hand on its back helped, though, and it relaxed again.

“Try to breathe,” Sierra said. “I think you’re… okay?”

“I am,” Sammaël managed, trying to ignore how rough the voice sounded. “Kind of.” It sat upright as she helped it back up onto the bed. “I did it.”

“Then what was all the—” Sierra made a scratching motion at her arm, “—about?”

“I’m… more aware,” it said. “A lot more. It’s harder to think… right.” It rubbed its head. Even words were coming out strangely. It was starting to realize that, without its larger mind as ‘close’ by, it had to rely more on Douglas’ understanding of language, which was imprecise at best. Even that was a strangely disconcerting thought, the idea that its mind was closer to that of Abraham’s. Like being locked in a room with a cloud of toxic spores, it tried not to breathe.

“I’m so sorry,” Sierra said, and wrapped Sammaël in a very gentle hug, much to its surprise. 

“For what?” it asked, although it also didn’t really want to do anything that might end the hug. Sierra seemed to pick up on it and squeezed a little tighter and didn’t say anything, leaving Sammaël to enjoy the comfort and confusion.

It understood why things hurt more, to an extent. There had been a distance between mind and body before. If it had kept that distance deliberately, it couldn’t say. But now that it wasn’t there, it was keenly felt. Like taking a step and realizing too late it was off the edge of a cliff, Sammaël was suddenly in an emotional and sensory freefall. And the worst part was that it felt like the ghost of Abraham Douglas, douchebag so prolific he should’ve gone professional, was right there with him. 

He was in every reflection, hiding in Sammaël’s words and even memories, which no longer felt like something to be absent-mindedly flicked through but something it had done. The last thing it wanted was to be Abraham. It was vaguely aware of Sierra squeezing it a little tighter as its breathing became labored, gasping, rasping breaths interrupted by choked sobs that seemed to come out of nowhere.

It wasn’t Abraham Douglas. But now, here, so far removed from what Sammaël had always been, it was starting to lose track of what Sammaël was. Of who Sammaël was. Was it even still the same entity? It had to be, right? If it wasn’t, what was it? But if it really was the cosmically powerful entity Sammaël, why did it feel scared and small? 

There was a moment, a very loud and tempting moment, where it considered giving up on the whole corporeal thing, and turn back to being Sammaël, rend the world apart and forget about this small ball of misery and noise and swim the cosmos again. 

But then… there would be no more music. Not just for itself, but… in total. There would be no more music and nobody would ever be there to listen to it again. And there was Sierra, of course. Who was still holding it. If it had still been up there, wrapped around the moon like a shadowy blanket, would that decision have been easier? Was this Sammaël… different? 

What if this wasn’t Sammaël at all? What if Sierra had figured that out already? Sure, it was still cosmically strange, but it certainly wasn’t powerful. It wasn’t even able to do something about the body it was in. So what, then? 

“What am I?” it mumbled, and realized that its voice didn’t grate as much when it whispered. Sierra pulled away and looked at it, her hands still on its shoulders.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I think you don’t either, so maybe together we can figure it out.” She smiled warmly, and it made Sammaël’s chest feel weird. It was a little light-headed, too. “Well, I think we can rule out ‘Abraham Douglas’,” she quipped. “I only ever saw him cry once and that was to get a better deal on a second-hand car.” She wiped away Sammaël’s tears. 

“Definitely not him,” Sammaël growled. “Never him.”

“Okay. So are you a cosmic entity on a joyride, here to listen to banging tunes?” Sammaël shook its head. Maybe originally, but things had changed. It had changed.

“Not anymore,” it said. “I think I’m… different, now, but I can’t understand why. This body feels like a… a prison. Like who I am is below the skin, that I need to peel it away in order to feel free, to feel whole again. But who I am is also not just… what I was.”

“Something new?” Sierra said, tapping her lip. “Someone new?”

It thought about that for a moment. If this really was all new, and it didn’t think like it used to, and it didn’t experience things like it used to, then— “I… think so.”

“Still Sammaël?” Sierra asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t know. Yes. No. Sam?” It liked Sam.

“Sam. I like Sam. Sam is nice, even if they’re a little bit awkward,” she said, giving another one of her trademark comforting smiles. “Even with all of the weird communication issues, getting to know Sam has beenbene fun.

“I think… I think Sam might want to try some of those pronouns right about now,” Sam said. 

“Oh? And which ones are those?” Sierra’s smile split into a wide grin.

“Well…” Sam said, and she smiled right back.

Three thousand two hundred and fifty four miles away, after a series of technical failures and human errors, an airplane took off from a runway that it wasn’t supposed to.