Part 771: Rag Doll

January 29th, 2021. Inside Aevum.

For every hour that passed on Earth, a little over 15 days passed inside Aevum. This meant that in the time that someone on Earth had finished watching the morning news, someone in Aevum could have lived through two entire work weeks with change to spare.

Jason Hiro was able to watch the demons slowly rally their forces, construct underground tunnels and defenses around Sinai, and portal Warpers over to surround the mountain. He knew the clock was ticking, and the demons’ attack was imminent.

Even so, Jason found himself trying to herd a group of teenagers around during one of the most hormonal parts of their lives. Jerome was extremely diligent in his training, and Jason set out to build a specialized chamber that would rapidly increase Jerome’s strength. Despite this, Jerome constantly skedaddled off to fool around with his girlfriend, wasting time in Jason’s eyes that he could spend training for the upcoming war.

Unlike Jerome, Marco seemed to suffer from extreme ADHD and utterly lacked interest in messing around with his power. More accurately, he feared his power, all because of his past trauma with killing a dog that had attacked him. No matter how Jason tried to explain things to Marco, it seemed he just wasn’t mentally able to wrap his head around fighting in a war.

Sasha surprised Jason the most. Once she learned that her power had more practical uses, she started using it constantly, even to the point of draining all her energy and passing out wherever she was standing or sitting. Several times, the other teenagers had found Sasha comatose on the floor drooling uncontrollably due to her mana levels being depleted below zero.

Jason should have been worried to see her overexert herself and pleased that she was being so diligent, but unfortunately, Sasha spent most of her time using her powers to design clothes. She was an aspiring fashion designer, and she loved to change the colors of outfits, alter the fabric and material, and do other such things. Her interest in anything warfare or combat related was just as pitiful as Marco’s.

Then there was Nadia. No longer needing to fear overusing her powers and ruining her body, Nadia dove into books, devoured the internet, and rapidly amassed a country’s worth of information at a speed Jason could barely fathom. Her ability, Total Comprehension, made it extremely easy for her to not only consume and learn new information, but to understand it as well.

The truly tricky part of her abilities was converting existing knowledge into new innovations. Someone could be a great learner, even a great teacher, but still end up a poor innovator. Luckily, Nadia did not have that issue. She was already showing signs of becoming an inventor superior to the Phoebe Jason knew in the future. The wife he’d lost.

In addition to all of them, there was Brian Bozzard. A flame manipulator Lowborn, he also lacked a killer instinct and drive to fight in battle. However, perhaps because of his wealthy upbringing and years of home tutoring, he was much more mature than the others his age. He diligently practiced manipulating his flames as Jason asked, but unlike a certain other flame manipulator Jason had known in the future, Brian was a lot weaker, and not terribly brilliant when it came to thinking up novel uses for his power.

Jason sat inside his Sanctum, hidden within a tiny pocket of Aevum, and sighed. The only teenager who was fully prepared to go to war was his daughter. Daisy had seen a future far worse than anything the other teenagers could dream up in their worst nightmares. Daisy had only been six years old when the demons attacked Hero City, the Fortress of Retribution. She had been outwardly fearless due to unexpected factors related to her young heroic awakening, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t suffered mental traumas from what she saw.

Then she went back in time and ended up captured, experimented on, and treated like an animal for at least two long years. It broke Jason’s heart thinking of what she had gone through. No child should have to go through what she did, and as a father, Jason could intuitively tell it had hardened her in many ways, visible and invisible.

Jason lowered his head. He stared at the floor silently.

It wasn’t that the teenagers in Aevum were lazy, but that he was just as broken as his daughter. What teenager would truly dream of going out and fighting demons, killing them, feeling their blood coat their faces and hands, and then doing it again and again for years to come?

Jason felt as if he had become unrecognizable over the years. When he first got his powers, he used them to laze around. He used them to make himself look big and macho and tough. He used his powers to make life easier for himself. He didn’t take the demon threat seriously, opting to let Neil and Hope deal with the military side of things. Jason played the role of a king, but he was nothing more than a spoiled prince.

It took terrible tragedies and losses to reshape him into the man he was now. Somewhere along the way, he had changed, just like his daughter. She was ready to fight. She was ready for war, just like him. Because she was broken. And so was he.

Jason knew it in his heart. It wasn’t natural, constantly planning and strategizing, preparing for a future fight. Humans liked being lazy, watching TV, playing games, cooking food, having sex. Jason liked it too… presumably. But somewhere along the way, he’d holed himself up in Chrona for a few hundred years and spent very little time with his wife. That was why she had died.

Phoebe Hiro died because Jason took the lessons of the past so seriously that he threw away his future. Now he wasn’t sure what he had to live for, beyond spending a bit of time with his little girl, and his father.

"What am I even doing." Jason muttered to himself.

It wasn’t a question, but a statement. He knew what he was doing. The same thing he’d done on the day Phoebe died. Planning and preparing for a war among wars. An unending war. Once the battle for Sinai began, it would set into motion a series of events that would continue out into the inestimable future.

If the demons won, would they be satisfied with their victory and lay back on luxurious couches in contentment?

If the demons lost, would they simply return to their burrows and give up, knowing any further conflict was pointless?

The answer to both questions was obviously ‘no’. Whatever the outcome, there would be another war in the future, and another after that, and still another. Even if the angels and demons were wiped out, there were still the Volgrim, and the entire universe outside the Milky Way.

Even if humans rose up and dominated the entire universe, they would just turn on themselves.

Jason closed his eyes.

Was this the truth? Maybe his earlier thoughts were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t human nature to crave peace and be lazy. Maybe war was actually their drive. Maybe war was something innate to the universe. Maybe conflict was, itself, a fundamental building block of life. All energy came from somewhere. Even cells reproduced by devouring the ambient energy within their surroundings. To gain something, one must first consume something.

Jason stood up. He wandered around inside his silent Sanctum. He stared at the walls, many of which had pictures of his deceased wife. He had created them with his Wordsmithing. They were photo-realistic to the point he almost felt he could kiss her lips.

But he didn’t deserve that. How could he think of his own pangs of longing when he had failed her, letting her die in the end?

Jason averted his eyes. He blinked heavily, then paused as he felt a signal lightly tap his brain.

[Dad?]

It was Daisy’s voice. He’d given her a small artifact she could use to communicate with him telepathically from anywhere, not dissimilar to one he’d given Phoebe.

Jason didn’t reply. Instead, he uttered a Word of Power and vanished from the spot, appearing in his daughter’s bedroom inside the dormitories. When he appeared, he found Daisy sitting on her bed, looking directly at him as if she had anticipated his exact arrival point.

"What’s up, sweetheart?" Jason asked, smiling at her with tired eyes.

Daisy opened her mouth to say something, but then she paused and squinted at him.

"Is that… you?" Daisy asked.

"Yes? Of course it’s me. What do you mean?" Jason asked.

"Not one of your robo-clones?" Daisy asked.

"No. This is the real me…" Jason said slowly. "What’s the matter? Is something bothering you?"

Daisy seemed hesitant. "It’s just… I can never tell if it’s you I’m talking to or one of your copies. It really bothers me, Dad."

"Oh. Sorry I’ve been making you feel that way." Jason said seriously. "But sweetie, don’t you think… you’re overblowing it a little bit? My copies are directly connected to my brain. I can see through their eyes, hear what they hear, experience the lives they live. It’s like I’m in six places at once. If one of them is talking to you, it’s exactly the same as right now, when I’m talking to you."

"Maybe it feels that way to you, but it doesn’t feel that way to me." Daisy said, turning her head away. "You don’t get it, Dad. I’m a telepath. Though I work hard to not use my abilities on everyone, I always have a surface level sense of what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking. But not with you."

She continued. "At first, I did have the ability to read your thoughts. Back when we met for the first time in the cabin. You felt like a real person. I felt your pain… I experienced what it must have felt like when you lost Mom. But then you regained your memories, built Aevum, and returned in a robotic body. Now your clones feel like lifeless pieces of metal to me, and your main body feels exactly the same. You don’t feel like a real human anymore. It really bothers me."

Jason stared at his daughter’s side profile for a moment. A sensation of guilt hung over him. He felt the air in the room grow a little heavier.

After a few seconds, Jason stepped over and sat beside his daughter. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze.

"I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t know you were feeling that way. You know why I have to do this though, right? Our enemies aren’t just the demons, but the angels too, and soon the Volgrim. The Volgrim Empire has an entire subspecies that specializes in telepathy. The very thing you find alienating about me is the same thing I’m using to protect myself, protect Aevum, and protect you. I can’t take a risk and allow you to read my mind, because a hole in my defenses would allow any telepath to do that."

"Besides," Jason added, "other people don’t have telepathy, and they do just fine interacting with me and my clones. I’m not saying this is a ‘you’ problem, but don’t you think relying on your telepathy to get close to other people is, in itself, a little alienating? What if you meet a guy in the future and he learns you’re a telepath, then he starts to distrust you?"

Daisy scowled. "I already know that’s a problem, Dad. I hadn’t disclosed my telepathy to anyone prior to coming to Aevum, but I’ve always known that telling people would probably scare them away. That’s why I didn’t. Even Sasha and the rest were weirded out at first. I think the only reason they didn’t ultimately pull away is because they had their own secret powers they were hiding, so they were just as focused on themselves as thinking about me, and the implications of me."

Jason lowered his gaze to the ground. He fell deep into thought.

This was not a problem he could easily solve. He could offer to make a tool of some sort that naturally inhibited his daughter’s telepathy, completely suppressed it, or entirely turned it off. Doing so would be pretty easy, especially for the current him.

But would that be the right thing to do? Of course not. For Daisy, telepathy was completely natural. She’d been reading minds since she was a child. It was just another sense to her, like hearing and vision. Removing it would be like cutting off her ears. She would feel vulnerable and limited, having lost one of the methods she used to read the world around her.

Of course, since other humans didn’t have telepathy, it not only gave her an unfair advantage when interacting with them, it meant their usually private thoughts were actually out in the open before her eyes. She could easily tell when someone was lying to her, pretending to be nice, hiding their real intentions, and other such things. Even something innocuous, like a white lie about how pretty her outfit looked, so as to not be rude, was still something she could see as plainly as if they had said it out loud.

Thus, if someone were to learn of Daisy’s telepathy, they would almost assuredly feel violated. They might feel as though their secret, innermost thoughts and desires had been laid bare by her. It was a form of mind-rape, one that would deservedly cause them to pull away.

Daisy knew this, and that was why she didn’t tell anyone. But just because nobody knew, that didn’t mean what she was doing was okay.

If Jason couldn’t even offer to disable Daisy’s ability to help her fit in, then what was the alternative? Maybe he could turn other people into telepaths? Turn the entirety of humanity telepathic? But if everyone was reading everyone else’s thoughts, then what would happen to private thoughts? Private fantasies? Could such an honest society function well?

The other option was something involving a more limited form of telepathy. Perhaps something akin to ‘consensual telepathy’ only? People couldn’t read the thoughts of others willy-nilly, but they could project their thoughts into the minds of others if allowed, and guard their innermost thoughts even from powerful telepaths like Daisy.

But in the end, wouldn’t that mostly be the same as living in a society of non-telepaths?? Jason was bewildered. If this was the solution he used, then he’d basically just turned people’s brains into a social media page, advertising their outermost thoughts while hiding their real selves. That clearly wasn’t preferable.

And, in the end, the real issue at the current moment in time wasn’t any of this philosophical mumbo-jumbo. It was that his daughter was used to using her telepathy to get a read on people, but she couldn’t use it on her own father, making him feel alien to her.

Jason didn’t mind opening up his private thoughts to his daughter. She would see shameful things inside his head. Sad things. Things that, in all honesty, he’d prefer she didn’t see, but as long as it was for his beautiful little girl’s sake, he’d be more than happy to make that sacrifice.

The problem was, Jason wasn’t lying when he said a gap opened for her would be a gap other telepaths could use. He couldn’t simply open his mind up to her and her alone. It would leave him vulnerable to the Psions, along with any potential telepaths among the demons and angels.

Come to think of it…

"The Psions…" Jason muttered.

"Huh?" Daisy asked. "What… what about them?"

Naturally, all these musings in Jason’s head had been hidden from Daisy, so she had no idea why his train of thought had shifted so abruptly.

"Oh, nothing, it’s just… I was thinking about the Psions, and telepathy." Jason said. "Now that I think about it, they’re a society of mind-readers entirely lacking mouths. They only communicate through thought. I wonder how a society of telepaths would function. I’ve… never really thought about it. I knew they were telepathic, and I took measures to protect myself and others, but I just had so much on my plate I never put a lot of time into the philosophy of a telepathic society."

Jason took a minute to detail his inner thoughts to Daisy, explaining to her why he’d thought of offering to inhibit or remove her telepathy, then why he’d thought of elevating humans to become telepathic, and how that ultimately led to pondering the society the Psions had built.

"Humans live and breathe a steady diet of lies." Daisy said, after her father had finished explaining his inner thoughts. "The reason you don’t think humanity becoming telepaths would be a good idea is because in your eyes, it’s normal to conceal your private inner thoughts from others. That’s how you’re able to scheme and plan for the future. It’s how you’re able to fantasize and dream about possibilities others might think are weird, or gross, or even abhorrent. And everyone around you is doing the same thing, all the time, every day."

"So," Daisy continued, "that makes you think that if everyone could read everyone else’s minds, then it would either end up putting us back in the same place, or it would cause a catastrophic breakdown in trust."

Jason nodded. "You read my mind. Metaphorically speaking."

Jason smiled at Daisy, but his little joke didn’t get a smile back from her. Instead, she gave him a deeply serious look.

"You don’t get it, Dad. If you want, you can read minds. You merely use telepathy. I imagine you don’t do it often, because you feel it’s a violation of other people’s privacy. And that is true… but it also means you’re not a ‘real’ telepath. You haven’t considered the benefits of a telepathic society."

"What benefits?" Jason asked. He was genuinely curious, and it seemed his daughter had put a lot of thought into this.

"Dad…" Daisy said quietly. "When I was nine years old, shortly after Uncle Vasily had adopted me, he let me adopt a puppy. I named the dog Ragdoll, because she was a Basset Hound with these cute floppy ears, curly hair, and she loved to roll around in the grass."

"Okay." Jason said, squinting at his daughter. He wondered why she’d changed the conversation so abruptly. "Sounds like a cute dog."

"When I was fifteen years old, just a few years ago, Ragdoll ran out into the street, right into incoming traffic." Daisy said, her expression unchanging. "She was hit by a truck. She died instantly. It destroyed me for months."

"Oh… baby." Jason said, feeling his heart deflate. He didn’t expect his daughter’s story to take such a turn, so quickly.

Jason started to lean toward Daisy, to kiss her forehead, to reassure her, but Daisy pulled away. Her expression was the same as before.

"I’m not done, Dad." She said firmly. "It devastated me. Words can’t describe how I felt. I could tell you that I cried for weeks. I could tell you that everywhere I went in the house, I saw Ragdoll in the corner of rooms where she used to roll around. I saw Ragdoll barking out in the yard. I could even tell you that I’ve never truly gotten over her death, and the guilt of not reacting quickly enough, especially with all my abilities, has only intensified over time."

Jason cocked his head slightly. It really hurt to hear this story from Daisy, but… where was she going with all this?

Daisy took a long, deep breath. She looked away.

"Dad, lower your mental defenses for a moment. Let me into your head."

The Wordsmith hesitated. After everything he’d told her before, she should know why he was so hesitant about making his thoughts vulnerable. It would also cause his clones in Realspace to become vulnerable to telepathic intrusion, too.

"It’s only for a minute or two." Daisy said quietly. "Just do it, Dad. For me."

His daughter wasn’t asking. She was giving him an order.

As a father, Jason felt like he owed Daisy a lot. He decided, at least this once, to do as she asked.

"Normalize." Jason said, targeting only his mental defenses.

In an instant, his psychic shield, impenetrable even to Cosmic Psions, vanished. His thoughts became freely available for Daisy to peruse.

But Daisy didn’t try to read his mind. That wasn’t her intention. Instead, she turned to look at him.

An instant later, her memories came flooding in.

It was like a dam had burst, a dam holding back a river of emotions.

Jason was there, age nine. He adopted little Ragdoll. He felt joy at seeing the cute little dog rolling in the grass. He cleaned up her fur, picked up her poop, scolded her when she peed on the carpet, but never held it against her.

Jason played with the dog. He took her to the park. He laughed when she chased away a dog much bigger than her with her little yappy barks. He felt a deep, deep connection to her, as if she were really his dog.

Sometimes, Jason sat at the computer with Ragdoll in his lap. The little Basset Hound would fall asleep with her nose buried in his belly, curled up in a ball. She was a playful dog, yes, but also a lap dog with a comforting presence.

Jason was there when Ragdoll died. He didn’t even see it coming. She bolted when his attention was elsewhere. He screamed in horror when he saw what she was doing. He was so caught off-guard that his telekinesis momentarily faltered. He failed to use his powers, something he’d instinctively trained since childhood. She ran out in front of the truck, and the sound of the impact struck him like a baseball bat to his face.

Thump. Crunch.

The dog didn’t even let out a yip or a yelp. She died instantly. His healing powers couldn’t revive her. He couldn’t save her.

Jason stumbled toward the dead dog, his mind in a fog. The truck had stopped a little ways up the road. A balding Russian man with a bulging belly hopped out and speed-walked over. He had a hobble in his leg, and wore a dirty pair of jeans along with a t-shirt that didn’t quite fit.

"Ahh, what you doing?" The man shouted angrily. "Letting your dog run into street? Look at this mess! Stupid girl! Why do kids not train dog properly, now I have blood on my hands! Fucking hell, idiot!"

The despair in Jason’s eyes grew. Not only had his beloved Ragdoll just been killed, but this piece of shit had the guts to berate him, as if it was his fault? Who gave him the nerve. He had no idea who he was messing with.

Jason felt his rage and fury build. Such a worthless man, not even repentant, not even sorry for what he’d done. Sure, it hadn’t been his fault. He had no way of slowing down in time. But to not even be a little sorry?

People like him shouldn’t exist in the world.

That was why Jason suddenly lashed out with his telekinesis, grabbed onto the man’s body, and let out an unintelligible scream of rage before shattering all his internal organs and compressing his existence into a speck of blood and bone.

In Jason’s rage, he brutally murdered the man, giving vent to his own hatred, his own self-loathing, his own despair. He killed that man to avenge his dog, to make himself feel better, and to…

…Jason didn’t kill the man. Neither did Daisy. Instead, this thought of brutally murdering the bastard who’d killed Ragdoll came and went. It was a momentary impulse, an explosive desire that she nearly acted on, but she didn’t. Instead, Daisy simply stood there, frozen, staring at the body of her dog, splattered on the pavement. The man berated her for a minute, then turned, stormed away, and got back in his truck. He drove off, leaving a trail of blood in his wake.

Jason knelt down next to Ragdoll. He sobbed. He couldn’t stop crying. The minutes turned into hours, and then days, and then weeks.

Jason buried Ragdoll out back, near her doghouse. He made a large gravestone, and even used his powers to chisel an image of Ragdoll onto the stone.

Physically, Jason moved on. But mentally, a part of him died that day. A part of his childhood innocence. It gave birth to a rage he couldn’t control. It gave birth to feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and self loathing.

Jason met with his friends. Sasha, Marco, and Nadia. They offered words of comfort. They were sad about the death of his dog. They were empathetic. They were understanding.

But a few weeks passed. Jason’s friends moved on. They didn’t forget about Ragdoll’s death, but they clearly didn’t put a thousandth the thought into her death as Jason did. He was still dealing with the pain. The sadness. The loss. The anger.

He should have been faster. He should have reacted faster. He should have pulled the dog back, or thrown the truck aside. He should have killed that bastard of a driver. No, it was good he didn’t. Even if the driver was a bastard, it wasn’t his fault the dog died. But still, that man deserved to die! It was good that Jason hadn’t killed him. He just wished he had.

Years passed. The pain faded over time. But it would sometimes come rushing back, ten times more intense than before, made even worse because of the time spent not feeling guilt, when he’d almost forgotten about Ragdoll. His fading guilt over any period of time made the return of the guilt so much worse when it struck again. How dare he not feel guilty about his failure? He’d failed Ragdoll. What right did he have to smile and be happy? He was a failure of a man.

…

Daisy’s memory of Ragdoll hit Jason hard. When the memory stopped playing, Jason found that he was sobbing uncontrollably, and he didn’t know when he’d started. His chest heaved over and over. It ached with pain.

All this time, Jason realized, he’d thought Daisy couldn’t understand what it meant for him to lose Phoebe. He’d been shielding her from his thoughts. He’d been keeping himself closed off.

But he was wrong. Daisy knew. Her loss might not be exactly the same as his, but that didn’t mean it was any less painful.

This was what it meant to be a telepath. It meant to share concepts, thoughts, memories, in their purest, rawest form. Words could only take someone so far. They could never truly feel what the other person had felt. They could only experience a small sliver of that person’s loss, or gain.

This was a hint of what a society of telepaths could experience. It was the reason Daisy felt so alienated by her father’s sealed mind. She wanted to experience his pain and happiness. She wanted him to experience hers.

As for the concerns of privacy, there was no reason a telepath couldn’t keep certain thoughts and feelings private. That was always an option. But what they did decide to share, they would share in the rawest, purest form. It allowed for a level of intimacy unmatched by mere words and body language.

"Oh, baby girl… I… I get it now." Jason said, still heaving terrible sobs of loss. "Ragdoll… Phoebe… they might… might be dead… but they exist within us. Keeping those… those feelings locked down… hic… it’s not okay. We have to be more open."

Daisy hugged her father tightly. She pushed her head into his chest, tears falling down her face onto his shirt.

Jason couldn’t just turn all of humanity into telepaths. It wasn’t a viable option, certainly not in the short term. But sharing more of himself with his little girl? That was something he now wanted to do.

It was now that he understood why she was the way she was. It was no wonder she seemed so… bloodthirsty. So hungry and eager for action. It wasn’t only because of what happened when she was a small child, but all her cumulative life experiences.

Daisy had lost her dog, someone she loved more than life itself. The guilt had forged her determination into something similar to Jason’s. She wanted to be better, and never to fail others again.

How could he tell her ‘no’ now, knowing all this?

"Dad… let’s just stay like this… for a while." Daisy whispered.

Jason had a lot of other work he needed to do. His duties were never-ending. Even now, he was micro-managing his clones in Realspace.

But…

"Sure, honey." Jason said, kissing the top of his daughter’s head.

He couldn’t say no to his little girl.