Telepsis - WC: 626

“Ah, look at all the lonely people.
Ah, look at all the lonely people.”

Lonely. So Lonely. Long ago it remembered the voices, chattering together in a sort of harmonious cacophony. It had been such a long time though. It could remember nothing they said, or thought, since they had no voices really, at least no language. There was no need for it. Language was just a way humans transmitted thoughts to one another. Useless when you can do it directly.

“Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,”

The words float to him, and he pulls what little sense and meaning he can find in them out. Rice. Church. Wedding. All of these words it knows have meaning, but it can’t think of them. Eleanor – that one sounds especially familiar. It knew – had known until recently – a human who used that name. It seemed to recall it had been quite fond of her.

“Lives in a dream,”

A dream. That’s what it felt like. That’s how much of it it could remember. 10,000 years of existence, of memory, reduced to bits, pieces, scraps impossible to put together. The gaps too large to fill in. And the parts it remembers seem so random. Where is it? What is it doing here? And where is the music coming from?

“Waits at the window, wearing a face she keeps in a jar by the door,
Who is it for?”

It knows what that’s like. It remembers wearing a lot of faces. Danny was what the last one called itself – a tall, gaunt face, with a pair of dark glasses. But there were others. So many others. It could remember all the faces, but only Danny’s had a name with it. And precious little else. Soon it would see it’s new face. It wondered what it would be like.

“All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?”

Where did it come from? Where did it belong? The first question it thought it had once known the answer to. The second it somehow suspected had always been out of reach. Belonging was something it could not remember, except perhaps back before. Before what? It wasn’t sure. That time before was even more vague and shadowy then the rest of the dream.

“Ah, look at all the lonely people.
Ah, look at all the lonely people.”

Lonely people. It had known so many. There faces floated back to him again, but still nothing more then that. Faces. At one point they must have been real people. But now, in his mind, they are reduced to this. Mere shadows, nothing more. Would this one be the same?

The music has stopped. Another voice, this one female, speaks. The singer was male. It isn’t sure how it knows this, or even what that means.

“Isn’t that song a little depressing, considering the circumstances?”

“It’s one of her favorites,”

“She probably can’t even hear you,”

“The doctor said people in comas are often completely conscious of what’s going on around them,”

“She’s been out for two weeks, Ethan,”

Two weeks? Of course, a mere fraction of a second to it, but it still seems to it to be far too long.

“People have woken up after longer,”

“I think it’s silly,”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I… just came to sit with her for a while. Keep her company,”

“Ok, Anna. I should get some sleep. Goodnight Anna…. Goodnight Corrine,”

And she awakens. It’s not sure how it knows this, it just does. Suddenly it becomes aware of another voice. Asking questions. Her mind opens up to it, and it begins to probe it for information.