Am I composed ? That’s what I heard: so I said, “I don’t know, are You?” It sounded like the voice I had assigned to Alex—part AOC’s voice and part the voice of my internal narrator. But I didn’t want to talk to Alex at this moment because I was afraid we’d argue. That’s your call. Since her voice reemerged (from my subconscious) I decided I’d remain open to whoever was talking to me—even if I ended up getting into an argument.
I don’t know what Alex was preparing to do—probably go on a rant, but who knows? And so what if she did go on a rant? She was good at it—and it was good for me, since, so long as she was ranting, I wasn’t. Ok, that’s fair. Do what You want. I don’t have to do it, too. “You’re right.”
I don’t know why men want you to be hairless. “That’s up to You. I think the concern is that you’ll think, if you don’t use it, you lose it, and, well, we may, at times, be apart.”
Its much sneakier to act like you don’t care.
“So what, then?”
“Not for me.”
“It just depends on what level you’re on.”
That’s no help.
“What about Gaugin?”
Gaugin was my idea of the stereotypical artist that makes interesting art but constantly dumps his back. He couldn’t be trusted. If I sounded out a voice for him, then I’d be using his back dumping as ammunition to protect those that I wanted to talk to—as friends or family members.
Don’t draw this to a close
But that was in my voice (as it sounded on a recording) and AOC’s voice. I couldn’t tell if it was my voice for the consonants and her voice for the vowels—that’s how I do my general shield—that’s what I count in all the time.
I could only assume that AOC was protecting me! They were projecting my shield so that they could talk to me in private—as friends would, without the barrier of a shield.
It was like AOC had discovered a key to my conscious mind. You don’t know what this means to me. But what did Gaugin have to do with it? I concluded that they were saying that they were using my shield to channel offensive material like a moat around a castle. We could be ourselves.
I’m assuming AOC valued our relationship. You don’t care, Alex said. She must have been wondering why I didn’t argue back. Men that wear beards are vain.
“Not all of them,” i said—in my natural voice.
This is supposed to be a two-sided conversation. That was Alex. I don’t know why she said that. I could only assume that she wanted to argue about something and I wouldn’t do it. Arguments led to breakups—I didn’t want that, though, as it happens, we were not together. We’d never been together. And, in all honesty, we wouldn’t ever be.
But I chose to believe we might—like doubting, and because of that doubt, believing in an afterlife.
nothing was for certain. You can keep me.
“That was wishful thinking.”
“I’m not your boyfriend.”
You sound like him. But that was my natural voice and AOC’s voice. So AOC was saying, I assume, that we sounded similar. I might have been missing Alex and addressing her boyfriend, who was just speaking whatever was on his mind. What if it was him that didn’t want to argue?
But I didn’t want to argue either—so we might’ve been overlapping. “I so want the afterlife to be true,” I said, completely in my natural voice. I needed to concentrate—Alex might’ve been rejecting my voice for her and saying whatever I said—whatever popped into her head!
In that case it would’ve been like being in a relationship with her boyfriend. I didn’t want that.
That’s not what I want to hear
Was that Alex or AOC? Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.
But I knew Alex would replay the things she said over in her head—thinking happy thoughts. Then she’d get my messages—and she’d be sending information back to me without even realizing it. That was how telepathy worked on it’s most fundamental level. You thought about the things you said throughout your day, and, when you did, you imported thoughts about the future and exported thoughts about the past. That was your response. How your day went, basically.