Before New Game, Part 5

2046 AD

8 Years BNG

She sat in the lightless streets, so far below the skyscrapers above that the sun couldn’t hope to reach her.

Lying in filth, her swollen belly protruding from her misfitting shirt, a place to rest her hands as she waited to die. Shivering in the cold, she could only just make out the hints of the upper classes’ existence above her- little shadows stepping through a glass-bottomed tunnel, the tiny blots that were their cars even higher up than that. Somehow, this never bothered her.

She fell to her side. Any day now.

Then she heard his footsteps.

The sound of shoes made her uncannily afraid. As she peered around the corner, she saw him- fully clothed and tall, like an angel.

He leaned down to her.

“Do you know my name?”

She could only just make him out in the darkness, but having only known but a spare few other living things in her life, she could shake her head without much thought.

He looked away from her, stricken by something.

“…This isn’t right, you know.”

She crawled closer to him, if only to feel the man’s warmth again.

“What isn’ right…..?”

“This, all of this. It’s not what I wanted.”

She giggled.

“What are you laughing about?”

“You don’t… get what you wanted…” She slurred like it was a proverb, smiling.

He looked at her now, and didn’t turn away.

“Do you want to live?”

She examined her dirty toenails.

“…Do l…?”

“Do you want to live. Yes or no.”

“I… I’d be okay… I mean… no…”

“And what if you were up there?” The man rose a finger to the sky.

“I dunno…”

He sighed.

“The truth is… there will always be someone down here, and someone up there.” She just watched his face as he spoke. “…But… the person down here doesn’t have to be you.”

He slid down to her level, sitting on the trash with the little girl.

“I had a sister just like you once.”

“You… did? You’re from… up there?”

The man nodded.

“I loved her. More than anything, I did. Maybe even more than… well. I can’t in good conscience say I’ve loved anything as much as I have my work.” He sadly snarked, wiping his nose. “But… when everybody else, even within my own family, was just another part of that work, she stood alone as someone completely indifferent to it.”

“In… diffferent.” The child repeated, trying but struggling to parce his ranting.

“She never saw me as anyone but her brother. And that bothered me, for a time.” He sadly laughed. “But… eventually… such a perspective became novel.”

The girl settled on looking into his eyes. While he spoke too fast for her to understand, she could at least see what he was feeling within those crying brown circles.

“I was just a man to her. And even if I’d never accomplished a thing, I know she’d still have loved me.”

The man was sobbing now, but broke his tears with a laugh before continuing.

“I told her she could live forever. Do you know what she said?”

“What… did… she say?”

“She said… “I wouldn’t do that even if I knew I was going to die this second.”

Kidney burst into laughter, psychotically bouncing his head up and down between his knees.

The girl kept watching, more used to the sight of despair than anything else he’d offered her.

“Can you really… make people live forever?”

He slowly rose from prison, staring at her.

“Would you… like that, if I could?”

“Maybe… maybe not if… if… if I still lived here.”

Then the man smiled.

Putting back on the persona he’d carried for years, he rustled her long, unwashed hair, and smiled like he was her own beloved uncle.

“What if I told you I was about to take this whole world and throw it away for good?”

Willow’s eyes sparkled like they never had before.