Chapter 24
In which everyone wonders if Ambrosia was a mental patient all along
TAMASHII
We sailed up the coast in record time, and were about to walk towards Kushiyama when three ships came into view. The Council had tracked us after all! "Hold it!" a man said, projecting his voice like he was speaking through a loudspeaker using a wand, "You can't go any further." He cast a Slow spell, and around us it was like one of those Keystone Cops scenes, only Lucy and I were going at normal speed. They had us surrounded, and the main guy at least was a skilled wizard. "Oh, come on!" I said, "What do you want already?"
"You know too much! You obviously plan to expose the Council's dealings in Eden to the world. This is why you went to a big town like Kushiyama," he explained. Lucy shook her head, "I do not care about such things! My other self is sick, and only Knowledge of Good & Evil will save her." He blinked, "Is this true?" He was facing me, knowing that a sweet and innocent child like me would not lie. He was wrong, but anyway. "Yeah, it's true," I said, "We picked up supplies at Eden, and we picked up this Fruit here." I showed him the dragonfruit thing. We didn't tell them that we'd cleaned up their ecological disaster, or that they'd probably never again be able to pollute Eden because the ground was saturated with the Tree of Life's nutrients. Some things were better left unsaid, and we didn't want them to have a reason to both us immediately. The Council assistant agreed to let us be, provided he could follow at a distance to verify my story. I got him to agree he'd leave us alone forever (since I knew he might be back after finding out about Eden, he might be back), and to get it in writing. Contracts, once signed, had unbreakable magic, unlike in times before magic where people could just claim we were entitled to land or had rights, but the contract wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. And so, we made it into the town of Kushiyama.
AMBROSIA
I awoke in a sterile white room. Nearby, another patient was screaming. In another nearby room, several Denialists were chanting, "Nothing is real, nothing is real, nothing is real, nothing is real..." In still another, a delusional man sung, "I'm Henry the VIII, I am! I'm Henry the VIII, I am, I am!" He carried on a little longer, but I tuned him out. I couldn't see how he could possibly justify that.
I was aware that I was probably in the schizophrenic section of a psych ward. I was admitted because I was catatonic. I was out of it, but not stupid. And although I often couldn't tell the difference between reality and delusion, it looked like I was clearly here. So that meant all of that quest to be an Oracle of Tao, that was all a delusion of grandeur. Which meant, I had never met Nevras or the others, I had never had Tamashii as a child, and never been anything but a beggar who eventually was hospitalized for disturbed behavior.
I felt a pang of sadness, a loneliness of a life that could have been. Oh well, I thought, as I stared off into space. The orderly came in and handed me a series of pills. Even with the latest medicine, for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, no combination actually worked, I heard the orderly complain to the doctor. "Doesn't matter," he said, "Up the dosage anyway. Family and other providers pay us to treat, not to cure. As long as they send them away, they expect us not to bother them, and just send a check to us if we say that they are 'coping well with the medication.'" I suppose I would be appalled by the cynicism, but at this point, I didn't care about anything either.
I looked at the pills with a vague indifference, noting only what I was given. One yellow and long capsule, three powdery purple discs, two powdery white medicines, one long orange capsule (this one was powder rather than with an outer capsule part), a red and white capsule, and three green and yellow capsules. It occurred to me that there could be anything at all in these, but I just swallowed the medicine and downed the water. The next day, same thing. The day after, more of the same. The medicine didn't work though. No matter what, I had vivid memories of life filled with adventure. That felt real, this sitting in a room kinda didn't. On Sunday, or maybe it was Thursday, they took me outside by wheelchair in the park outside. I could walk just fine, but they wanted to be sure I didn't wander off I suppose. Then it was time for a bath, and more medicine.
The orderly looked a bit strange. I had a vision of someone looking exactly like her wearing sturdy shoes and using a grappling hook to climb a city wall before being arrested. When I was lucid enough to talk, I sometimes talked about seeing people in the institute before with my therapist. My therapist, for instance, looked like the king of Kushiyama, at least before stuff happened to him. But sharing what I saw usually made things worse. They upped my dosage, they declared that more supervision was needed, they did everything but just give me peace and quiet so my mind would settle. The medicine didn't give me any relief from these "memories" as I called them, but it made my stomach hurt like I had ulcers or something.
One day was different from the others. An orderly, this one looking like Koren from these memories, informed me that I had a visitor, "Your twin sister is here to see you." But I didn't remember having one. A girl with blue hair and a face like mine, but far too pretty to be any sister of mine, entered the cell that I was in. "Could we be alone for a few minutes?" she asked. The orderly nodded, "But no more than five minutes. Visiting times are limited." She closed the door, and the girl who looked like a Shiny version of me, went from seemingly relaxed to urgent. "We need to get you out of here, Ambrosia," she insisted, "You're in Kushiyama right now. You're in a coma, and you're getting worse! You need to wake up now!" I was just lucid enough to protest apparently, "What are you talking about? There is no Kushiyama! There never was. Doctor Yamingka says that the whole place was a representation of my need to fight authority figures. Authority figures are good." The other me, who just now told me her name was Sapphire by the way, asked me, "What are you talking about?!? The Ambrosia I know wasn't a revolutionary, but she certainly wouldn't just sit here all day taking her medicine and defending her therapist. That does it, I'm taking you outside! Being out of this psych ward might help you escape this world." Behind her the lock clicked open, and the orderly said, "I think not. I'll be reporting this to the doctor, and you will be banned from this hospital in the future." Sapphire threw a right hook, and the girl I associated with Koren went down. "Dumb bitch," Sapphire said as I stared awestruck, "I never liked her, always trying to take Nevras. Can you walk?" I shrugged. "On second thought, let's get you a wheelchair." While Koren was out, she took her keys, then switched clothes with her, putting her into a brown dress, while she donned a white medical cap, some translucent stockings, and a white nurse's dress. She kept her old shoes as she was a bigger size. She locked the door, and turned a second lock to make it soundproof. Sapphire's hair was a shade of blue that didn't match... well, anything in this hospital, but after a moment in the bathroom fixing her look, she found a wheelchair for me, and she had a dull brown wig. I fully expected her blue eyebrows to expose her, but it looked like she had colored it.
She led me to a wheelchair and got me to sit down in it. When people asked, she insisted that she was talking me out in the park for recreation. She got as far as the front door when a nurse screamed, "That nurse doesn't have a nametag! And she isn't wearing regulation shoes!" I looked down to notice that she had some comfortable brown boots but they indeed were not the white heels commonly worn on the hospital floors. "Someone stop her!" Some nice young men in white coats were coming to take me away. Sapphire ran, pushing the wheelchair as fast as she could. She had to turn left to go down a ramp, losing precious space between herself and the hospital staff. She turned and raced through the park, making it 50 ft from the gate. 40 ft. 30 ft. The gate was starting to close, but left me for a second, and ripped the fencing off the gate, losing more precious time. She started for the gate again, but several people grabbed her, and the wheelchair toppled. I was about ten feet away, as Sapphire screamed, "Run! Run!!!" I looked back for just a second, and it seemed that rather than regular nurses and staff, they were some sort of Monster trying to pull her apart. Sapphire went down in a bloody mess. I took her advice. I ran through the gate.
JESUS
Sapphire and I were keeping Ambrosia stable. She was now about 30 lb less than her normal post-split weight. In the New Earth, things like hunger and thirst didn't matter as much as the original Earth. In other words, you couldn't starve or become obese very easily. A man wandering in the wilderness wouldn't want to starve to death, so he wouldn't. But an anorexic or bulimic would be able to mess up their body greatly, as would someone who thought fat is beautiful. The same principle applied to pregnancy. It was not impossible to get someone pregnant through rape, unless they wanted to have a child as consequence. Such children would be like clones of the mother (although male copies were not unheard of), having nothing to do with the father.
All of a sudden, Sapphire felt something as part of Ambrosia that I couldn't sense. She used all of her power, and she collapsed. I checked her pulse. Nothing. She was an empty husk. Ambrosia opened her eyes, still mostly out of it, but aware enough to scream when seeing Sapphire with eyes open on the ground. I closed them.
Tamashii arrived not long after, with a fruit that I recognized immediately as the Fruit of Knowledge. "Give it to her, and break off a piece for Lucy, she needs some too." Lucy tasted it, "I dunno why you gave me this, I'm a separate person and it's not like need... *munch* *munch* See, I don't need any... My voice! It's changed!" I said, "Not just that. You're a separate person now. You can have Nevras's child if you want. You aren't tied to all this anymore." Lucy did in fact remain close to them, but this time it was out of bonds of love rather than any sort of commitment.
The change to Ambrosia was more subtle, but in some ways much more profound. Weeks before, she wasn't eating, now she demanded food, as much as they had. They gave her the salted fish, the pickled vegetables, the marmalade, even the fresh meat and produce from the visit to Eden. The healing previously didn't take, but now Jesus healing her worked with all the food she just ate, restoring her to normal weight. But not just that. Before all this, she still thought of Lucy as "Evil Ambrosia" but now she called her Lucy like everyone else. Now she seemed to regard her as a sister she never had.
And something else. Ambrosia had always been kinda deadpan, lacking in empathy toward others, and unable to notice even some things about her own family, but now she was perceptive about emotions. She approached Tamashii and gave her a big hug, aware that the trip had been long. She worried over Nevras, and gave him a long kiss. She looked at Lucy with a knowing glance, possibly suspecting they had done something, but not seeming to mind. She was concerned for Tamashii's friends, who didn't get as much screen time as they could have. And then she noticed me.
"You," she pointed to me, "There's something you need to ask of me, isn't there?" I explained about how long ago, I had possessed the body of Rena as she was mourning the original Oracle, Alicia. "But I thought the Oracle before me was supposed to be a boy? That doesn't sound like a very boyish name," she asked. I explained the whole transmigration thing, and how Alethea had originally been a girl, but... well it was complicated. Ambrosia shrugged. "So basically, you want me to use the the Tao to heal instead of hurt something? I've never tried this before." The Tao te Ching had a saying about the right side being auspicious in war while the left side being auspicious in affairs of state. Rotating the Tao this way the last time was what caused Alicia her life. I wonder if Ambrosia would be okay?
