Blink (outline, spoilers)
by @Urby

This is an outline of Blink, with some scenes written out. I would like feedback on the overall arc of the story as well as the scenes. Bullets in italics were covered in the first draft.


It was that annoying part of the semester when having three days for a week-end felt long enough to be a serious interruption of work rhythm, but not nearly enough to be a restful break.

I have a present for you, Veit wrote in the link-journal.

Can you drop it off? I have some reading I'm pretending to catch up on, Finality wrote back.

It's cooking stuff. When are you thinking of eating?

She hummed in curiosity. What is this 'eating' you speak of, it sounds fun.

It's not as interesting as it sounds. You put stuff in your mouth and you have to chew it for a while and then you get rid of it. Actually kind of gross.

Well, suffering gets done more quickly if a friend is with you, so you can come eat at my kitchen if yours is busy. Most of my floor is in the library right now.

Excellent, he wrote. He showed up at the kitchen a half hour later with a box so halfhazardly filled that it was obviously more cumbersome than it should have been.

"What is that," she said. 

"It's for you," he said from behind the box. She blinked a few times. He didn't move.

"Put it on the counter, I guess," Finality said. "Seriously though, what is it?"

"Alright, so, before I open it," Veit began, setting down the box. She didn't mention that the box was already open. It also seemed polite not to look into it before he explained himself. "Someone on my floor is an Oruthi - a nonhuman who can't stand fermented things."

"Oh...like anything fermented?"

"Even the scent of something fermented or spoiling makes them sick. They're so paranoid that they won't even let me use my blender in the kitchen. So...ta-dah," he said, pulling out some of the things that were in the box: the aforementioned blender, a glass jar of dehydrated mushrooms, a collection of knives and slotted spoons, and a heavy styrofoam container.

"You put a box in a box," she said.

"I'm aging a ham in it."

"Veit, you usually age meat in like...a specific room to control the drying factors and stuff. Otherwise it would shrivel up too fast."

"I'm not trying to preserve the meat, I want to cultivate the surface," he sighed.

"Oh, like a cheese? You're eating the rind!"

"Sure," he said, taking the mason jar out of his bag. "I won't ask you to look after it since it might offend your nose - just leave it somewhere dark and maybe damp? Basically what I'm asking for is; I need to use your kitchen 'cause I got kicked out of mine."

"Well, it's not my kitchen," Finality said. "I think I use it the most, but I'm not the one who makes decisions about who gets to use it."

He leaned in conspiratorially. "What if I used this kitchen, but you didn't know, so if anyone asks, you don't know so you're not responsible."

"I mean, sure, but I'm kind of hanging out with you right now and --"

"It's called playing along!"

"It's called I'm hungry and I want to eat!" she held her hands up. "Fine, do whatever, I just don't want to get in trouble for your stuff."

Veit laughed and spread out the spoons. "Anyway, these things are clean; I never touch them without my gloves since they're not made of resistant stuff. If you want to use them you're welcome to, as long as you don't use everything up."

She picked up the glass jar of mushrooms. It was a "wild" blend that consisted of morels, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms. It was surprisingly palatable - perhaps he didn't have access to more exotic ones.

"Hello Sheryl," she said when she noticed movement in the mason jar, as if its occupant was waking up.

"Is the dead meat box open?" Sheryl asked.

"No," Veit said. "I'm not going to open it in here. You wouldn't be the only one who wouldn't appreciate it."

"Okay. Can I come out?"

Finality looked around the kitchen for an empty pot. "Do you like being in water, Sheryl? I can get you something to sit in."

"That would be great, thanks!"

In the end, Sheryl was too cute to end up in a kitchen pot, so she lounged in one of Finality's patterned bowls instead.

"So Veit, do you have to eat fermented things or is it just a taste thing?" Finality asked.

"It's easier on my stomach. I have to replace my digestive flora every so often. But yes, it's also very tasty to me."

"You'd love fish sauce."

Veit blinked. Sheryl's eyes, and body, shone with interest. "Hm?"

"Fish sauce...is..." Finality gestured vaguely. "Well, it's a condiment. Made from salting a fish so much it kinda ferment-digests itself."

"That sounds suspiciously like something a Mycelonian would come up with," Sheryl remarked.

"As far as I know, it's a human thing, though I wouldn't be surprised if Mycelonians also tried it out."

"I've never heard of it. What does it taste like?" Veit asked.

"Salty. And...fishy? Tough to describe. Here, why don't I cook something with it," Finality said, standing. "Mushroom rice, maybe with some ground beef I have?"

"Do it!" Sheryl said, clapping damp hands together. "I want some too!"

"I dunno," Finality frowned at a pot that was hanging on the drying rack. It hadn't been washed very well. "Are you allowed to eat things?"

"She can eat very small amounts of some stuff," Veit said. "Rice should be fine."

"I can eat lots of lots of stuff," Sheryl pouted.

"Oh no, it looks like I only have enough rice for two people," Finality said dramatically as she measured out the rice. "It's okay though, you can eat some of Veit's."

"Yessss."

Veit didn't try to talk to her too much as Finality cooked, which suited her just fine - food took a lot of focus, and she didn't like to have her attention split between a pan over a stove and a conversation. The mushroom rice was pronounced a great success by all, and Veit promised that he would order some fish sauce for himself.

Veit sometimes did some studying in Finality’s dorm, especially when he had an epiphany or something to share. It faced the sun for most of the day, was close to the kitchens, and was quiet enough for studying or conversation.

It took a while, but eventually, Finality stopped caring that there was someone else in her room and that someone was a man, because Veit was a friend and he wouldn’t try to hurt her and left her stuff alone.

For the most part.

“You have unread messages,” Veit said, looking over the link-journals she kept in the back of the room.

“I know,” Finality said, hoping she could deter him from them with her tone of voice. 

There was one in particular she knew he was looking at – a standard one with an unmarked cover. He continued looking at it, though he made no move to open it. “There are a lot of them,” he said.

“I know.”

“Who does this lead to?”

Her jaw felt stiff. She rubbed her cheeks to try to ward the feeling off. “...My family.”

“You don’t like your family?”

“I only open that journal when I’m already angry and feel like being more angry.”

Veit’s mouth parted for a bit, then clicked closed.

“Besides, they probably wouldn’t pay attention to anything I tell them,” Finality felt the corner of her lip peel back just considering the thought.

He frowned, though she couldn’t tell if it was because he understood.

“Can I throw it in the trash then?”

“What!” she turned around to smack his arm. “No! Leave it alone!”

“I can’t imagine why leaving it around helps you any,” he said. “You should get rid of it.”

“I can’t,” she said. She wondered if she’d have to stand between him and the journal so he would stop talking about it. “They would know.”

The color of the lights under Veit’s uniform darkened. He stepped past her and started pulling open some drawers on her desk.

“What are you doing.”

“Here,” he said, putting the link-journal in the first empty space he saw. “If you really want to be angry, you can look for it. But at least it’s not in the open now.”

Finality sighed, then put her hands over her eyes.

It's not something you normally study. Give yourself a break, Finality wrote. You're used to hard facts because you're an engineer. But history doesn't need to make sense. It often doesn't. It's more like literature than reality, even!

But it's driving me crazy! Veit wrote. Everything else about the Terraforming Era, I got it. No problem. I write notes on it and I read them and I know them. But if the exam has a question about the final battle? Gone. Nothing. Instant zero.

That's funny, she wrote. That sounds a lot like what I'm running into with learning glyphs.

You're learning glyphs?

I found a lab book for Beginning Spirit Machinery. That's like, baby stuff, right? But every time I complete some exercises and give myself a break, the next time I open it, I can't remember a damn thing. I'm glad I'm not the only one with short term memory loss though. Maybe I should try again when it's not exam time.

He didn't respond for a long time - long enough for her to wonder if he had gone back to studying. She left the link-journal open and went back to her reading. After a few minutes, she glanced back at it. The next thing he'd wrote took up half the page, scrawled in thick, frantic strokes: BRAIN LICKERS

Finality blinked at it. She waited a few seconds for an explanation before writing a quick what underneath it.

Veit's next message splattered itself all over her short question: PRISON LICKING WHY ARE THEY CHOKING LEARNING THEY'RE KILLING IT I DON'T GET IT

She closed the link-journal as if it would protect her. Her ears rang with hot confusion, even though she knew that she wasn't actually being shouted at.

The apple on the journal lit up a moment later. She had to take in a breath before she could open it. I'm coming over can we talk. have door open was what he'd written.

She had a feeling he wouldn't notice if she replied in the negative, and her chest ached just considering what might happen if she didn't play along. She unlocked her door and sat at her desk and waited. Acutely aware her hands were empty, she grabbed the corner of a piece of paper and started tearing it in a spiral.

Veit didn't knock. He entered her room with a stiff but polite formality. His jaw was split with how hard he was clenching it.

"Hi," Finality said in a small voice.

"Um." He seemed like he hadn't prepared what he wanted to say once he found her. "How do I start. This is serious."

"Start somewhere," she said, completely unhelpfully.

"Have you ever been to Correctional."

"Excuse me!" she said, nervous fingers dropping the paper. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just ask me if I've ever been institutionalized because I like being friends with you."

"I'm not --!" Veit made a motion as if he was going to flip a table, but stopped himself halfway. He growl-sighed and closed his eyes. "Do you know what they do in Correctional. How about that?"

"They do 'correctional therapy' to you for a few years and you pop out with your brain problems fixed," she said. "What does that have to --"

"Brain lickers," he cut in, gesturing widely. "What they call 'correctional therapy' is sticking your skull into a vat of mental elementals -- service spirits, and they suck on your thoughts until there's nothing left behind of what's wrong with you."

She tried to swallow. She felt her throat move thickly, but her mouth still felt sticky.

"Disgusting, right?" he said. "Thing is, brain lickers don't need to be in close proximity to you to start messing with your head, if they're concentrated enough..."

Finality heard herself start to make a low noise.

Veit was pacing in a tight circle. "If you've ever been near Correctional, or if you have a prison near your colony like mine because apparently nobody cares if a bunch of Mycelonians get long-term exposure to this sort of shit, you know that they can lick you even if you're not in there. Brain lickers are hungry. Acid; it's like acid, they lick at whatever they can taste and! And it crawls into the cracks in your head..."

"Eeeeee..."

His shoulders shook as if he was laughing, but he made a sound like wiping steel wool across a blackboard. "And you know what would be messed up? You know what would be messed up? If a powerful institution that has lots of money and lots of people wants to do some thought cleansing for whatever reason --"

"Eeeeee."

"And they have a bunch of brain lickers parked all over their buildings, because fuck, if we're packing it full of service spirits anyway!"

Finality was full-out screaming now, trying to drown out what he was saying. He stopped pacing and looked at her. It took her a moment to stop and to steady her breathing.

"What I'm saying is that it's messed up," he said.

The first thing she responded with was another wordless scream, quieter this time, but then she straightened herself out and cleared her throat. "Yeah, of course," she said, with as much grace as she could muster.

"Why only certain subjects, though? I don't get it," he said, feet tapping against the floor. "People double-major, maybe not all the time, but often enough that the brain lickers can't be slobbering indiscriminately. They're focused. That means that there must be a pretty powerful set of brain lickers, maybe even somewhat intelligent..."

"Do service spirits like that still exist?" she asked.

He hesitated. "Yes," he said. "...And if they can't be found, they can be made." He pulled out the mason jar from his bag and set it on a desk nearby. Finality stared at it. The water was still.

"Hey, Veit?"

Veit glanced over at her. "Ye?"

"Is it like, some kind of secret that service spirit engineers know, or is it common knowledge that...um, about the brain lickers?"

His lips pulled back, but not in a snarl. "...I know of it because part of my colony worked in the prison," he said, watching her carefully. "And...um...well, their contributions to the collective memory got crazy, but before that happened, I learned that a lot of prison equipment for 'cleansing' are older versions of things that come from Correctional facilities."

"Oh?" Finality picked up a pen and rolled it as slowly as she could in her hands to occupy them.

"Yeah. They don't even bother to replace the labels or the branding on the machines," he said, taking a sudden interest in the wall behind her. "...Maybe we'd be able to trace the facility they came from. But that would require examining them more closely."

Rolling the pen was getting difficult because of how much her fingers were shaking.

"...Are you okay?"

The pen stopped. She took a few breaths as she decided whether or not she should respond.

"My family...on my dad's side...was recommended to send me to Correctional. By a doctor."

She could feel Veit staring at her.

"The only reason they didn't was because it cost too much money," she said in one tense breath. "They didn't want to spend that much money on a mixed child. Because I 'wasn't a real Weissritter' so it didn't matter if I wasn't their idea of..."

She was entirely too present in her own body. It wouldn't stay still. There was dryness in her throat, her mouth, her eyes. They itched. She reached to rub at them and poked herself in the face with the pen. "Oof."

There was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor. When she looked up, Veit was sitting nearby, but not so close that she felt like her space was being imposed on. He was holding the mason jar.

"Do you want to hold Sheryl a bit?" he asked.

Finality nodded mutely. The mason jar was cool and the cap was off. There was movement in the jar's waters, providing something for her to focus on.

"Finny!" Sheryl said in a soft tone of voice. "Hey! Um!"

Finality blinked.

"Your family might not think you're a real Weissritter but they're missing out, 'cause you're a real friend!"

Finality closed her eye. The trembling in her body trickled away.

"The reason why I'm the only one in my colony to leave is because I'm the least like the others," Veit said. "Because I look the most like a human...and that makes me less one of them. But I'm not human still."

"You're halfsies," Finality murmured. "But not good enough to be one of either."

"Yeah."

Finality chuckled humorlessly. She looked down at the jar, which churned with activity. Sheryl was hanging on the edge of the jar. "...Am I a halfsies too?" the water sprite asked.

"You're definitely a mix," Finality said.

"You're too many things to be only a half," Veit said.

"I'm a bunch of things!" Sheryl beamed. "Sorry, no offence, but that means I'm even more awesome than both of you!"

This charmed Finality into laughter. "Oh no! Oh no...of course, Sheryl, you're too awesome."

Sheryl reached over to touch Finality's hands over the edge of the jar. Veit cupped the jar, which seemed like a gesture of solidarity.


The apple on Veit’s link-journal was glowing when Finality came back to her dorm. She popped it open to have a look.


How long are deliveries from Maclaod supposed to take? he had written.


No longer than three weeks, she wrote back. Package size doesn't matter unless you're ordering something bigger than the size of an astral ferry basically. Why?


The answer he penned was thicker than his usual writing because of his frustration. Because I ordered fish sauce and it hasn't come in!!


Finality blinked at the message.


You ordered fish sauce from Maclaod? she wrote.


Yeah, because it was delicious and I wanted some. I told you I was going to do it.


When?


Probably the day after I had some.


She put her hands to her head and had to get up and run around the room, shouting. Then, realizing he couldn't tell that she was having a mind-blowing epiphany, she sat down and wrote back to him. Veit you are a genius thank you


Um, yes? I'm still mad about the fish sauce though can I have yours


The intradimensional post uses the Travel Sphere and you just reminded me that it's still in operation. If the Travel Sphere is still in the system, we can find out where it is by using the post!


His response was slow as he processed the implications of her statement. How do you propose we do that?


Oh. That was kind of an issue, wasn't it. She needed to send a package to an offworld location and then get a response from that location if they received the package.


Can we send your family a package? she asked.


There was a heavy wait between the message being received and his response. My colony can't get mail.


Finality nibbled on her fingertips.


In that case, I'm going to have to bake an inordinate amount of cookies.


...Come again?


My family likes this one kind of cookie? And if I send them cookies they'll write to me and be all smug about it...and depending on when it arrives, I can figure out where the Travel Sphere is located


Veit responded with a picture of a sad face, which he then turned into a frown. Do you really have nobody else to send a package to?


Not off-world, no.


I can help you shop for baking supplies.