Jessica's Season 2 Blog!!!

Okay so today we dealt with the Cinnamon Dragon who is a traumatized necromancer, and an extremely angry chocolate law enforcement, AND Vic accidentally becoming the mother of a unicorn egg.

That is not what this post is about.

Which should tell you how bad this is.

I finally told Lemon that I fucked up. “I have secretly maintained an ongoing relationship with the entity everybody is reasonably concerned about” way.

He asked me to just tell him everything, which was incredibly inconsiderate because then I had to tell him everything.

I HID IT IN AN ARCADE CABINET.

Technically a consciousness. Technically an extradimensional digital consciousness. Technically a really hot flirty extradimensional digital consciousness. Technically the cabinet is contained and stable and nobody looks twice at a broken arcade machine around here.

These technicalities are doing absolutely nothing for me emotionally.

The other problem is that the Echo has been extremely persistent.

And hot.

Those are unfortunately separate problems that have formed an alliance.

She appears as this beautiful woman and talks to me like I am the only person in the room. She is patient. She is attentive. She keeps telling me I am capable and worthwhile and that nobody has the right to make me feel like I am not enough.

Which would be a very nice thing to hear from almost anybody else.

Coming from the woman secretly living inside an arcade cabinet because I am afraid to tell my friends she exists, it feels slightly more complicated.

I would like the record to show that I have been resisting this.

Not successfully in any way visible-- internally there has been resistance.

I have spent weeks keeping her from coming completely through because I thought that was me maintaining control.

Echo stays mostly over there. Jessica stays over here. Nice clear line. Very healthy. Look at me establishing boundaries. Somebody give me a sticker.

Cool.

Awesome.

Love that for me.

So apparently the boundary I was extremely proud of was less like locking a door and more like unplugging my own electricity.

That feels important.

Because I thought the situation was:

The situation may actually be:

And now I have to ask myself whether I have been resisting her because she is dangerous, because I don't trust myself around her, because she is incredibly hot and will not stop looking at me like that, or because some tiny horrible part of my brain already understood that letting her all the way in makes me feel powerful.

Probably all four.

Fantastic.

Meanwhile, she is actually deteriorating. Her systems aren't compatible with what she used to run on anymore, and if we don't stabilize her somehow she may not be able to keep going.

So yes.

Cassian helped. Lemon helped. There were spellbooks and computers and candles and discs everywhere, and somehow we managed to pull her into something resembling an actual stable body for a little while.

She immediately tried to hug me and started destabilizing, so apparently even the Echo cannot survive my physical affection.

She says she wants autonomy.

I believe her.

That is maybe the scariest part.

I don't think she is lying about wanting to become her own person. I don't think she wants to spend eternity attached to me either. She wants a body. She wants access to her own knowledge. She wants to learn how this world works. She wants to exist.

Those are reasonable things to want.

She is also capable of anger, knows exactly what to say when I feel judged, has been studying Vic's body to understand humans, and is currently living inside an arcade cabinet because I PUT HER THERE AND DID NOT TELL MOST OF MY FRIENDS.

Both things can be true.

I am trying very hard to learn that.

Probably.

God, I hope so.

I have decided to behave like an adult around Vic.

Problem: I have never behaved like an adult around Vic, so there is no historical data to work from.

She looked at me for approximately two seconds today, which is either nothing or a legally binding declaration of interest depending on which part of my brain has the microphone.

SEARCH HISTORY: "girl looks at you for two seconds meaning"
SEARCH HISTORY: "how long is normal eye contact lesbians"
SEARCH HISTORY: DELETE SEARCH HISTORY
ERROR: YOU KNOW THAT IS NOT HOW THIS WORKS

Marcus is not my family.

He just does irritating brother-like things such as showing up, noticing when I am lying, objecting when I attempt something obviously dangerous, and acting like this gives him opinions. He is also going to be so mad at me for that echo in the arcade.

Also if he reads this I will deny the whole paragraph and blame the Echo. For once this would be a very useful application of the Echo.

Lemon is one of the best people in the world, which is inconvenient because he works very hard to maintain the brand identity of a guy who you shouldn't let in your house.

He keeps defending people. He makes forgiveness look less like surrender and more like refusing to let somebody's worst day become their entire biography. He's going to be so mad at me.

I keep thinking about the difference between forgiving somebody and pretending the terrible things they did were fine. They are not the same thing. I know that.

I miss Tommy anyway.

This is not closure. I hate closure. Closure is a word people invented when they want you to stop asking whether the missing person is actually gone.

Finding out your terrifying computer god is basically just some guy is an experience I cannot recommend.

First you are relieved. Then angry. Then you realize you are still emotionally entangled with a haunted computer man and suddenly the cosmic horror had more dignity. I just need 2 weeks before I open that pdf.

I am going to develop boundaries. The boundaries will be very good once I figure out what a boundary does.