He needed something unexplainable, like art, but physical, and now he believes he has the answer. He starts searching for any other scientists who might have come to the same conclusion.
He doesn't know how long it has been since he started searching but now, he found something; there is a sight on the experiment of a scientist that shows almost the same results as he has. Without reading much else he notes the address down on his watch, ignoring the ringing which means that somebody is trying to get in touch.
Not much later, and he is walking down a corridor in a different university. It’s always like this; the public teleporter never took you exactly where you wanted, but close to the opposite side of the building. He sees a very old man walking down the corridor, muttering, others seemed to jeer at him.
"You are Andrew" he heard one man was say slowly as though he is talking to a foreigner who spoke no English.
"Shut up, fool!" The old man snaps, "I know my name! My question is who am I?" William finally could not resist it, he stops the old man.
"Dear professor Andrew,” he said " I have the answer to that question, you are a man everyone calls Andrew yet the moment you were born you had no name, so how can you be Andrew? Well you are your memory, and memory is knowledge. Since your knowledge is ever-changing, you are not complete till the moment of your death; and that's who you are, a memory in a physical body." the man's eyes shone.
"Thank you young man," he said, shaking slightly " I have the answer to my lifelong question now, I think I can retire at last" a shadow was watching. A young lady, dressed in a fashionable cream suit, with honey blonde hair, tied up in a ponytail and big ocean blue eyes that seemed to shine, hidden slightly behind small rectangular glasses. She looked young, very young, yet bore a grave, intelligent expression and in fact she was scarcely younger than William. She had stopped when she heard William talking to the old man and now wore a serious but slightly amused expression, she walked up to William.
"Hello," she started in a sweet voice, but her eyes testy, "Do you have a minute to spare?" William felt himself blushing, 'if the skirt was an inch shorter ... ' then, gaining control of himself, he replied, looking up from the hem of the skirt slightly hesitantly.
" Well, I don't know, I came here to meet professor Melbourne." she looked satisfied.
" Then you'll have time," she said, taking off her glasses and putting her right hand forward, "My name's Anne Melbourne, nice to meet you…. professor...?"
" Southlake," he prompted, taking her hand. "Call me William though"
" Okay William, would you like to come to my office or would you like to stand here and freeze your legs off? Follow me."
"Oh that old experiment, nobody believed that one!" Anne was saying. "They weren’t prepared to accept that there were some things are more powerful than science!” She laughed
"If I didn't believe it, do you think I'd be here?” William replied, his face perfectly straight, yet it seemed to make her laugh even harder, he would never understand women.
"No, you're right, you wouldn’t be, would you?" she said after regaining her seriousness. "You want me to talk about my conclusion then?"
"Yes." She sat there for a second, tapping her finger on her lips and pouting slightly.
"Hmm,"she smiled, again making William’s pulse race, " This ‘being’ you found out about yourself, seems to have this need to control what happens in this world, so my conclusion is that perhaps it is a sort of alien trying to make a future it desires. Whatever reason it wants to do that for, I can’t even begin to guess, and though I may sound ambitious, I don't want to live in a world that's controlled by something, so I'm going to get rid of it."
"Joka..."murmured William, but as soon as he had said it, he didn't understand why he had said it, or what it meant. This was not the first time either, it was as though a different part of his mind existed and took over sometimes, this time it was even accompanied with a feeling of great anger and remorse, like he had never felt before. He shuddered; Anne was looking at him in a strange way.
"What's wrong?"
"Um ... n .. Nothing..." he stuttered, "I'm fine, yes, I'm fine." She continued looking at him suspiciously and William was embarrassed, not knowing why he hadn't told her.
"Fine, don't tell me." She pouted, leaving William even more embarrassed. " I even told you my ambition and you don't tell me what Joka is,” she continued with that silly pouting expression staring at the wall, while William was looking down at the floor instead.
" I don't know," he replied slowly, " I don't know who or what Joka is. " He explained the rest quickly. A few minutes later, Anne was looking at him in disbelief.
" Well well, I like you, you're interesting!" she declared with a rather smug expression, looking at William as if he were some prize of achievement. " Lets find Joka."
"Joka? Why call it Joka?"William responded without thinking much.
"Seemed appropriate, that's all.” she said, with a strange sort of grin. "Anyway, going back to what I was saying, I think that it's in that cyberworld that seems to be missing off the government cyberworld administration, but with me and you put together, we'll find it."
"Have you devised a way we can get away with spending ages in the public cyberworld pods?"
"Yes, we'll use mine."
"You must be rich!"
"No, I won it; are we going to sit here forever discussing how much money I have or do you want to go to my
Hoverjet?"
It didn't actually take that long to find the missing cyberworld. William and Anne even wondered what sort of people the government employed, obviously not that professional. Suddenly, William felt tired, he wondered why, and then he remembered that he hadn't slept for over 2days. He took out a sleep relief pill and felt refreshed, but still with no sleep. William would have asked Anne whether they could rest before they went except that Anne’s face was full of triumph s she said,
“Watch out Joka! Here we come!” He didn’t want to spoil it for her. They went into the pod and checking through all the floating patches that resembled buttons, pressing them in a sinking motion, the pod makes that fast sinking motion that makes William’s stomach churn. However when they arrived they were on top of a hill, the wind blowing in their faces.
“Where are we?” asked Anne, “What is this place?” But William was not listening; He had fainted. On the ground beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and he seemed to be in some sort of trance that had been triggered by his exhaustion.
“William … William …” William opened his eyes, only to find that he was already standing. How strange.
“Oh, you’ve noticed.” A boy stood there, he couldn’t have been more than 18, he had the most beautiful green eyes, blue, pale and dark at the same time, such a deep colour you could get lost in it, yet it was impossible to tell which way he was looking. His blonde hair was longer than Williams chocolate brown hair and he wore a simple rough cotton shirt with trousers that looked like jeans but probably weren’t, rolled up to reveal his smooth and almost see through pale skin, so different to the olive that William had.
“Who are you?” asked William
“I am you.” The boy answered.
“What are you talking about?”
“I answered your question.”
“You’re nothing like me.”
“I am the opposite of you.”
“Then how are you me?”
“I am the lost part of you.”
“Do you live inside my mind?”
“Yes, I do now, well guessed, it was us who said ‘Joka’ earlier on.”
“Us?”
“You and me put together”
“Was it you who felt the anger and the remorse?”
“No, the anger was yours, the remorse mine.”
“Why are you telling me this now? Why not tell me before?”
“I only found you recently”
“You found me?”
“Yes we were separated so I was looking for you.”
“How come I didn’t know about you?”
“The memory of our separation came with me, but you would have felt it.” He smiled. “I can tell you of Joka.”
“Can you? How?”
“I, on my own would not be able to tell you, but if we become one again, my heart tells me that we will know. For many memories were lost, William at our separation, many lost, or perhaps hidden away”
“You’re telling me to become one with you?”
“Yes.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you will die, Joka will not and I shall remain incomplete.”
“Joka… is that really it’s name?”
“We’ll know if you make that choice.” William hesitated, thinking hard through his life.
“Do you think I shall lose my memories as William?”
“We don’t know that yet.”
William thought again, and remembered Anne. He made his decision.
“Let’s do it let’s go back to being whole again.”
Anne was looking at the sleeping William, he looked troubled, or suffering, she took out her handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his forehead, thinking over all the things that had happened that day. She had noticed how friendly she and William had become only in that short time. As she got up to search for some water, she cursed herself for not realizing how tired he had been.
As she came back she saw a figure standing there.
“William! She cried, running to embrace him, but stopped. What she saw there did not look like William at all: he had dark blonde hair and amazing blue eyes, healthy looking skin and was dressed in a weird garment. He was very handsome.
“William? Who is that? My name one Fukki, one of the First Five.” There was an eerie silence in which their eyes did not leave each other’s face.
“But I am still partly William.” He laughed.
“Please don’t shock me like that,” Anne said letting out an explosive breathe, “I was very worried about you.”
“What I said earlier was true, come, we’re going to Joka.”
“You know the way?”
“Yes, stay close.”
They walked into a cave nearby and Fukki picked up a stone, which he then put into a crevice. The wall slid away, leaving in front of them a long passage they walked down it, their footsteps echoing mysteriously, Anne clung to Fukki but neither spoke a word.
At the end of the passage was a room, strangely modern, made of a material Anne did not recognize but that was not what she was looking at in the middle of the room was a crystal. The crystal contained the most beautiful thing Anne had ever seen, the creature had long fingers, silvery skin and though drawn it would not have looked so beautiful but there was something about it that was so striking.
“JOKA!” Fukki bellowed in an earthshaking voice and Anne clung even tighter, “COME OUT TO GREET THY KIN!”
“Fukki… is that you?” he did not turn around.
“Yes, though I do look different,” something shimmered and a ghostly figure of the creature inside the crystal appeared, she was crying and Fukki felt great remorse, almost guilty.
“I am sorry to have put you through such terrible eternal pain. You must have been so lonely.” Anne could not read his expression. But Joka’s face had changed, it twisted grotesquely, contorting in rage.
“Let me kill you!” She rasped, “Let me maim and imprison you and put you through eternal pain and solitude as you did to me!” But Fukki’s expression remained unreadable.
“I have come here to relieve you of your misery Joka, I shall be the on who kills today.”
“Why! Why kill me if you are the one who put me through this misery!”
“I simply do not wish to live in a world controlled by you, that’s all.” He smiled wryly “I shall do anything to stop you now Joka, even if it means my life. Come.”
What happened then Anne could not tell, it was simply too quick, all she heard was a loud crack and Fukki embraced her, guarding her from all the flying debris. When the dust cleared, the crystal had cracked and Joka’s body lay sprawled on the ground. Fukki continued to embrace Anne.
“There, now we have a free world, destiny will end,” he smiled gently, “the only destiny is us.”
