[Corentine] Read online



  [CORENTINE]

  by James B Willard

  [Corentine]

  by James B Willard

  Copyright 2011 James B Willard

  Chapter 0: Foreword

  [Corentine]'s first incarnation (as the Origami Shadows website) was designed to illustrate an idea introduced in the narrative - that the mind can process seemingly unrelated, disorganized information into a general understanding of events that occurred in the story. The passages of the narrative were broken into small pieces, scattered across several hundred web pages, and presented in various formats - some were written with invisible text, some sections were hidden in image descriptors on pages, some sections of the stories were converted to binary or hexadecimal code, and so on. The site was designed as an expanding web of unmarked links; the page names were chosen to help reinforce or introduce ideas that the narrator was experiencing. I composed and published music (as Brokenkites) to accompany the reading of the material; track names matched up with page names in the site and were intended to expand the experience of the story by incorporating multiple types of media into the whole work. Some of those page ideas have been retained in the Supplemental Materials Section of the text.

  Origami Shadows was a puzzle that the reader had to reassemble in order to see the complete picture, just as the characters in the work were attempting to recompile their own disparate ideas about what they remembered as the truth. I'd been fascinated with the idea that you could take a book, tear every page out of it, read the pages in any random order, and at the end, you'd still have a good understanding of what the book was about. While you may have a slightly different perception of the story than someone who read the work in its original format, I love the idea that your own perception and the blanks that your unique imagination fills in for you are what makes the story complete. Isn't every story unique from reader to reader based on how the individual imagines it to be and how their own perspective colors the work, filling out the details with the things that they've imagined as they play out the narrative in their mind?

  However, the presentation of the story as a design concept precluded it from appealing to readers who were interested in the story but didn't want to be forced into both discovering and then reassembling the fragments of the narrative via web browser.

  [Corentine] is the original story presented in a more congruous format while still retaining the elements introduced in its incarnation as a website. I hope that you, the reader, enjoy it. If you do, please tell a friend about it. Thanks for supporting independent writers, artists, and musicians.

  - j

  What truths, darkly, driving like nails

  into the box, with

  signed fate, sealed and delivered;

  Ah, what truths shall come, and pass!

  Fortune, weary at her wheel, weaving wonders unseen

  for times that fade on other planes,

  whilst endlessly we toil,

  scraping meaning from salted soil.

  Unearthed! At last!

  Old treasures sought, which rise again, to live. And

  with each incarnation, her hands torn to the bone,

  she must carry on,

  so that the thread

  may reach the loom.

  [CORENTINE]

  by James B Willard

  Beware the Night. Beware the light.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  Origami Shadows © 2006 by James B Willard

  Corentine © 2011 by James B Willard

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.

  Recommended listening to accompany the reading of the material in this book is available by searching for BROKENKITES in your favorite digital music store.

  Please visit https://hollowscene.com for more information.

  Once Upon A Time...

  Open the Door. Step into the Light.

  Though they'll try to mimic what we are, in the core of our souls, writing our very memories for us, they will never be able to replace the truth and the reality as it existed before they've tampered with it. They cannot write our histories for us, our very thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions. There will be no questions. We'll always know the difference between the real and the imagined.

  Attributed to a skeptic (In reaction to the initial press release issued by Synchro Systems about their Synchronicity Drive treatment tests)

  Wir stehen immer gerade davor, der Rand zu fallen, ich denke, ihren Balanceakt beobachtend.

  Sie hat Angst nicht, aber ich bin für uns beide erschrocken genug

  ...Origami

  Chapter 01

  You get all kinds of ideas in your head when you don't know what's going to happen next. You think you can save the day, right the wrongs, punish the evildoers, and you think that, if you're lucky, you'll be able to get the girl in the end.

  When the elevator stopped, I stepped into a sterile room very similar to the one I'd left just a moment or two before. A reception desk was across from the elevator, and at it, a sharp looking woman dressed in black clothing sat. She was staring at me as soon as the doors opened, and she didn't break her gaze while I stepped out of the elevator, quickly sized the room up, made note of the pair of glass doors behind her that appeared to lead to two separate hallways, and returned my attention to her.

  "Um," I started, unsure of what to say to her. "Hi."

  Her neutral expression didn't change, but she adjusted her glasses slightly and briefly looked at something behind the facade of the desk. I assumed that there was a monitor of some sort embedded in the panel. I didn't have time to ponder what information she might be receiving, because she spoke.

  "Welcome back, sir. We've been expecting you."

  That really threw me off.

  "You're kidding, right?" I asked. "You say that to everybody when you catch them breaking into your research complex don't you?"

  She raised an eyebrow. I noticed her eye color, then: blue. It was a good color for her.

  She avoided answering the question, though, probably because it was a stupid one. She typed something into a keypad on the desk and then returned her full attention to me, clearing her throat.

  "We know who you're looking for. We have the answers that you're seeking."

  Of course, you probably have some questions of your own that need answering.

  It's hard to pinpoint when something like this really begins. When did my fate commence? Was it two weeks ago, or six months ago? A year ago, even? Did it all begin long before that, when I first met my wife (an unhappy woman that I've now divorced)? Did the avalanche of events begin when I was in high school as I scribed love letters and dubbed comp tapes for pretty girls in an effort to win their fickle affections, or even earlier, when I experienced my first kiss with the much older and more experienced babysitter behind the bleachers after a little league baseball game? I don't think I was more than ten years old, then. Does it go back to the day I was born, when my mother, eight months pregnant, ran a stop sign, which resulted in a car crash, which then led to an emergency procedure where the doctors had to induce labor so that they could save us both?

  A person could get lost in trying to trace it all back, really. A person could wrap themselves up in a cocoon of remembering, analyzing every little detail, examining the minutiae of their life, digesting it, hoping to emerge on some bright spring day, triumphant and transformed, but still, I think they'd fail. It's all too big, i
t's expanded too far, and it's kind of like our flawed, human concept of the universe. We just don't have the psychological makeup to grasp the infinite number of possibilities that have expanded out of every little decision that each and every one of us has made throughout our lives, ever since the beginning of time.

  So let's go back to about two weeks ago. A starting point as good as any other.

  The phone had been ringing for a couple of minutes when I finally gave up on ignoring it, threw a couple of the towels into the bathtub, and made my way to the kitchen so that I could answer it.

  "Hello?"

  "Hey, you." It was Janine.

  "Hi, JJ. What's up?"

  "Nothing much. One of you guys called?" It sounded like she was eating a salad. Crunching noises made their way through the phone line, and I remember thinking that it was too early in the morning for a salad.

  "I didn't, and Cor's not here. I thought she might be with you. Maybe she called you earlier this morning, before I woke up," I suggested.

  "Guess so. You all right?" she asked.

  "Ah, just a little plumbing problem here at the house, not a big deal. The floor's flooded in the bathroom. Downstairs neighbors are probably getting a free shower right about now. Why? Do I sound angry?"

  "I can feel the waves of your irritation all the way over here," she answered. Janine had the unnerving ability to tune into the moods of whomever she was talking with. Sometimes, she was a surprisingly perceptive kid.

  "Didn't she leave a message for you?" I asked.

  "Nope." More crunching noises. "Just a missed call."

  Corentine, the third party in question, was my girlfriend, who'd vanished that morning, though I didn't realize it at the time.

  I used to kid Cor and Janine that they were like magnets for each other, opposite ends pulling themselves towards a common center point. That point ended up being in New York City, just after we were returning from our travels abroad, when we'd met Janine and quickly become friends.

  "It's not like her to leave like this," I said. "Especially without waking me up, or at least leaving a note for me." My girlfriend was in the habit of leaving notes for me whenever she'd leave the house, because I was in the habit of worrying about her whenever she'd go out. She left notes for herself, sometimes, too, just to make sure that she remembered things that were important. As a result, we had quite a collection of sticky notes scattered throughout the apartment that we lived in.

  "Well, hope for the best and plan for the worst! I hate to say things like that because they're overly cliché, but what can you do? You might have to make your own sandwich for lunch today, you know," she cracked. "I'm sure that she'll call or be home soon, though. I'll let you get back to your plumbing problem now." This was a joke that Janine liked to make at my expense, implying that I wouldn't be able to survive for long without someone present to take care of me. Janine's feminist leanings were a little extreme, at times, and she'd voiced her scornful opinion about Coren's daily sandwich making on several occasions.

  Janine hung up without waiting for a response. Sometimes I had to remind myself that phone etiquette had died a long time ago, and even though she was mature for her age, there was still someone just past being a teenager trying to grow up and be a full-fledged adult in there. She sometimes forgot that growing up meant that you probably should say goodbye to end a phone conversation, or at least wait for a response from the other party on your last, somewhat strange and insulting, statement. I wanted to tell her, frequently, to stop rushing it, but I knew that she would figure it out just like I had, and probably like I had, once it was already too late.

  Corentine and I filled the roles of big brother and big sister to her, I guess. That was cool. We really enjoyed Janine's company, and they'd get into (and out of) plenty of trouble together while I would wander around the city trying halfheartedly to shop out both of my novels and the one five song demo I recorded a few years back when I was going through my delusions of being a rock star phase. I knew that it didn't really matter if I signed up with a label or found a publisher. The settlement checks from the divorce were the one good thing that came out of my past and in periods when I worked, I even managed to save a significant amount of money up in various bond accounts and investment packages, but it helped to have the goal. On the subject of the investments, I got lucky a couple of times with some pretty big stock trades, pulled some things out of the market a few times before it tanked, bought low and sold high, and even made one or two pretty lucrative sports bets. The interest I was earning was enough to survive on, most months, once the initial lump settlement arrived. I worked because I was bored, or because I was hiding from the memories of the times before I'd moved to the city, or because I liked to punish myself with pointless low paying and degrading jobs with glass ceilings that no one working them seemed to be aware of but me. I learned to hate cubicles before that, even, but that was a long time ago when I was living somewhere else, when I was a very different person, a world away and a foreign life that was merely a precursor to my current state.

  I walked back to the bathroom, determined to clean up the mess before it did any more damage to the house. I threw every towel, washcloth, and napkin I could gather into the pool in the middle of the floor. What I really needed was a shop vac. I wondered if any of my neighbors had one that they'd be willing to let me borrow for a couple of hours.

  While I cleaned and some time passed, I started thinking about the different reasons Cor might have left and where she might have gone. It wasn't like her to leave without saying goodbye, and as I said to Janine, I expected some sort of note on the refrigerator or the bathroom mirror or something. I wondered if I had missed the note because I'd been distracted by the overflowing sink. I headed back into the kitchen to check.

  Nothing out of the ordinary there. As I'd thought, she hadn't left a note. I even got down and looked beneath the refrigerator, in case it had fallen onto the floor and somehow gotten wedged beneath it.

  "This is silly," I said to myself, standing up.

  I picked up the phone and called Janine back.

  It rang three times before she answered.

  "Something told me that it would be you again," she said, her voice clearer than the last time that we talked. She must have finished eating that salad.

  "Yeah, um," I hesitated, then committed. "Why do think she'd leave like that? It's bothering me – a lot more than it probably should, but something doesn't feel right. It's not like her at all to wander off somewhere like this, without waking me first, without calling at some point."

  "It could be anything, really. Could be PMS, even. Maybe she doesn't want to be found!" She was kidding again, I knew, but something about the whole situation had me feeling uneasy, so that made it worse.

  "I hope that's not the case. I was thinking how it's possible that she went back home or something. Maybe it happened too fast for her to say anything, to say goodbye. Maybe she remembered her past and she forgot her present. What's that called? A fugue state?"

  "I don't know. I don't think so. Don't be a pessimist. She's probably out picking up some groceries or something. Have you tried walking down to the docks? You know how she loves to feed the gulls down there."

  "I have a bad feeling, Janine."

  "Stop being insecure. She loves you. You don't leave people without saying a word when you truly love them unless you plan on coming back."

  "The docks sound good. Do you want to come with me?" I asked, hoping her uncanny abilities to run into people that she knew everywhere she went would come in handy.

  "What about your plumbing problems?" she asked.

  I shrugged.

  "Unless you've got a shop vac at your place you can bring by, the towels are doing a pretty good job of soaking up the pond," I answered. "Maybe I can catch a couple of fish and keep them in the bathtub." I tried to be lighthearted, too.

  "Sorry, no shop vac. A trip to the docks does sound like a nice diversion, though. I'm
taking it easy today, anyway. I got a fat paycheck from a distrusting housewife when I gave her some incriminating photos this morning. Serves the guy right, though, pompous pig that he is," she told me, running a whole range of tones from happiness to disgust in a few short sentences.

  I made a mental note not to get on Janine's bad side, or even on one of her friend's bad sides. She worked freelance as a private investigator, usually spying on people suspected of having affairs. Jealousy generated impressive paychecks.

  "It's good to see that you're using your job skills for what's right and good, Janine," I said. "Give me 30 minutes to work on this a bit more, and I'll meet you at the corner."

  "Sarcasm noted and ignored," she replied. "Don't forget to grab something to feed the gulls with."

  "Okay, see you in a bit."

  "Bye!" she exclaimed, sounding excited, and to my surprise, ending the conversation appropriately. As if she knew what I was thinking between our calls! My uneasy feeling faded a little.

  "Do you ever wonder what happens to us when we die?"

  Rolling over to face her in the dim light of early morning, I asked her what brought the subject up.

  "I don't know. I was just wondering it. I was almost asleep when the thought came to me again: what happens when I die? That's what I was thinking about all day yesterday."

  "That's a pretty heavy thing to be thinking about at four in the morning, don't you think? Is that what all strange girls do instead of counting sheep?" She knew that I was joking with her.

  "Well, that. Moreover, we do complex physics equations when we're really stressed out in order to get our nerves settled. Who needs beer when you've got Schrödinger's cat playing cards in your head with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare?"

  "Great, an opium induced tea party's just what you need. Go back to sleep!" I insisted, making one last valiant effort at avoiding a conversation pertaining to the afterlife, because I knew that a conversation like that would inevitably lead to a conversation about god, and that meant that further hopes for sleep were to be abandoned.