I pushed away the memory, but it wouldn't go away. Then I felt someone tap my shoulder. I didn’t open my eyes, but the tapping didn’t stop.

  “Go away,” I whispered.

  And the tapping stopped.

  After a few minutes, I noticed my breathing had gone out of control, so I took long, slow breaths until I didn’t feel lightheaded. And I finally opened my eyes, expecting the airport, but instead I was greeted with a black void, the only thing in sight being Fifth of the mist sitting a few feet away from me.

  “Are you feeling better?” they asked.

  I looked away from them and gave a noncommittal nod, saying, “So, do you know what this place is?”

  They looked at me for a moment, finally saying, “After what… happened, the memory dissolved, and this is what was left over. I’ve never seen anything like it before, so I can’t really tell you anything with certainty.”

  “Then just guess,” I snapped.

  Fifth sighed, “You didn’t want to see that memory, so you pushed it away, destroying it, and now we’re stuck here, so it’s all your fault. Happy?”

  I glared at Fifth of the Mist, “At least we have something to work with now.”

  They looked around the empty void, “Don’t know where you’re getting that from.”

  I rolled my eyes, “This is a place to host memories, right?”

  “That’s accurate.”

  “So we just have to put a memory in it.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. I don’t have access to my powers anymore.”

  “We’ve done it before, I think.”

  “When?”

  “Just a few moments ago, it flashed between memories we thought of when you talked about being a horrible dad.”

  Fifth bristled at the last bit, but said, “That wasn’t under our control.”

  “No reason we couldn’t try.”

  “Well… I guess I don’t have any better ideas.”

  “So where should we start?”

  “It’s your idea.”

  “It’s your freaky mind prison. How do we get to the memories?”

  Fifth sighed, tilting their head in thought, “Well, all we have to do is just focus really hard, it’s not that difficult, just an ounce of will. At least that’s how it worked when I was observing.”

  “So just focus on a random memory, and it’ll happen... Why haven’t you done that yet?”

  “I’ve tried, but I think we have to be in sync for it to work. Also, the memories would have to be similar enough to meld together realistically, or we’ll just reject it instinctively. Like your immune system finding a foreign body.”

  “Similar in what way? Event, emotion, physical experience?”

  “A mix of all three, but mainly emotions, that’s the main thing we remember.”

  “So… any idea what memory we should pick?”

  “Let's start out with something we know will work, the Remembrance party. Or, well, more accurately, my absence from it.”

  “Is that the holiday that mixed with Christmas?”

  They nodded in confirmation, “Should we get started then?”

  “Yeah,” I held out my right hand, and they grabbed it in turn.

  I closed my eyes and remembered the specific Christmas evening, the smell of peppermint and chocolate in the air from the cake my mom baked. When I opened my eyes again, I saw my childhood home's living room with a circle of couches around a table in front of a TV playing some old black and white Western my Great Uncle liked.

  “Jacob, do you want whipped cream with your cake?” I heard my mom call out from the kitchen.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “Yes,” My uncle said.

  “I was talking to Uncle Jacob, not you, Jake,” I scowled at the name, but I got my expression under control before anybody noticed.

  Then my mom walked out of the kitchen with three plates of her chocolate peppermint cake, still half dressed in her nurse's garb. Having only gotten home two hours ago, after warring with the hospital's schedule like a D-Day soldier so she could spend the evening with her family. Then immediately went to cooking up a small feast in an hour and a half after having been on her feet for 10 hours straight.

  When she died a couple of years ago due to covid, I was honestly surprised it wasn’t exhaustion that got her. Then she sat between me and my brother on the couch, my uncle off to the side in his wheelchair.

  I leaned into her for the first time in half a decade, feeling her warmth, smelling the traces of disinfectants underneath the medley of ingredients she handled while cooking. She put a hand on my head instinctively and started brushing my hair, something she hadn’t done since I was eight, and asked her not to because I was embarrassed.

  God, what I would give for her to do that again.

  Then the voice of Fifth of the Mist brings me out of my thoughts, “Jacob, where are you?”

  I sat bolt upright, the scene around me freezing, the air turning still, and the people around me turning into mannequin versions of themselves.

  “The Christmas,” I said, “Like we agreed on.”

  “I don’t see you anywhere.”

  I sat back on the couch, “Right back at you.”

  “Did you get the right memory?”

  “Yeah, Christmas of 2010. Did you?”

  “Yeah, but if you’re not lying, then something happened.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek for a minute before speaking, “Remember, at the original memory you weren’t actually there, but inside that office.”

  “So we should just go to the office, ok then-”

  “No,” I interrupted, “I don’t have any real memories of visiting my dad's office, so the memory was completely on you, I think, since there was no human architecture.”

  “Gah, you’re right, we chose the wrong memory. We have to pick something else.”

  I crossed my arms, “I’m coming up blank, we don’t really know each other enough to pick memories in common, unless you’re willing to give an in depth description of your entire life?”

  “We might have to… No, wait a minute, I don’t think we have to choose.”

  “What’cha mean?”

  “The magic already chose a couple for us.”

  “One’s that flopped,” I reminded him.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Not all, the airport and the divorce papers share a lot of common ground, so I think they’ll be stable.”

  I think it over for a minute, saying, “Let's give it a shot then.”

  “Which one, though?”

  “Divorce,” I said immediately.

  “Sounds good.”

  I closed my eyes again and remembered sitting behind the stair railing, and when I opened my eyes was blocked by it. This time made from the fleshy alien material of Fifth's home world. And through them I saw the mannequin of my mother sitting across from Fifth of the Mist, then I stood up and walked towards them.

  Having some trouble as I tried to crawl onto one of the chairs, obviously not built for a kid, but I eventually succeeded.

  “Is that actually you?” Fifth asked, “You’re looking a bit shorter than usual."

  “I was ten when this happened, I hadn’t even hit puberty then.”

  “Uh… that’s the growth period where you turn into an adult, right?”

  I nod in confirmation, “Yeah, but let's get this show on the road already.”

  “I agree, but I believe there are some more things you should know about how this works,” they gestured all around them, “My power, I mean.”

  I narrow my eyes in suspicion at the willful divulgence of information that I could use against them when we got out of her.

  Which they seemed to have seen when they said, “I’m doing this because I don’t think we’ll get out of here if you don’t know this.”

  “Go ahead then…”

  “This is one of my skills called ‘Core Breaker’. It’s meant to get me into a person's head, then play through their memories till I find their center, their most fundamental self. And well… break their mind.”

  I raised an eyebrow and said, “I might be a little biased, but that sounds even more morally dubious than my super enslavement.”

  “Well, it’s all I had,” They curtly replied, then said, “I'm getting off topic. Anyway, the goal of the skill is to find the core of our being by searching through the memories of the affected. Normally, I'm in the backseat guiding the process, but it seems you somehow turned it against both of us at once. And now we have to find the core of our being, and via a way that keeps us together. Or we’ll stray too far away from our cores, whatever metaphysical rope attaching us to them snapping.”

  “I’m guessing that’s not a good thing.”

  “Correct.”

  “So, how do we proceed now that I know this?”

  “It doesn’t really change anything; we just keep reenacting the memories.”

  “Then why did you tell me this?”

  “Because if I didn’t, you would start getting suspicious about everything I said from now on. I admit I don’t know you well, but I know your type. There needs to be some sort of trust between us till this ends, or we’ll just die.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say against it, so I gracefully shifted the topic. “Ok, get to signing the papers then.”

  Fifth hesitated.

  “What is it?” I asked

  “Remember what happened last time I did this.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “Well, I think we’ll go back to the airport when I finish this.”

  I paused, “Oh… is there anything else we can do then?”

  “I have an idea, we have quite a bit of control over the memories due to them being ours. And the reason we shift to a different memory is because it has a strong association with it; we just have to find a different one.”

  “So how do we control which memory we go to next?”

  “Like how you rejected the airport, will, that’s all there is here really. And if I push against the memory with you, we’ll probably end up along a different route of association."

  “Probably…” I sighed, “I’ll take it.”

  “Are we finished discussing?”

  “Yup.”

  “Ok, then,” Fifth said, scrawling what I presumed to be his name in an alien script on the dotted line.

  The next time I blinked and opened my eyes, I felt something pulling us along, and I smelt a flicker of that stale airport air. I pushed against it, then I felt the sheets of a middle of the road hotel bed on my hands as I sat on it.

  Nope!

  I pushed once again, feeling something straining against me for a confusing moment before it started pushing against the hotel memory as well. Following me into the next memory, the smell of brewing coffee greeting me as I opened my eyes to see a confused Fifth sitting in front of me at the cafe table.

  Asking, “What was that second one about?”

  “Bad memory,” I said, refusing to elaborate.

  “Ok… so what’s this memory? What were you doing here? I probably prefaced that with, I’ll need this info to get past this as fast as possible.”

  “Ok,” I said, without question, looking around as I recognised the location, “I was meeting with a friend IRL for the first time, I found while playing some MMO, probably WOW, since I had broken my two years of Warcraft sobriety around this time.”

  “I don’t know what half of those words mean, but ok. So, how did it go?”

  “We met, we got drinks, had a decent day at the local Dave and Busters. And that was it.”

  “Any idea where this might lead us?”

  “The Dave and Busters, maybe, but not really. I lost contact with the dude about three months after this, we only met up because we realized we lived close to each other. It wasn’t anything deep, I don’t even remember his name.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yeah,” I shrug, “But what about you, what’s your memory?”

  “Same as you, nothing special. Just met up with a distant cousin for a bite to eat because I was in town.”

  “So then, what are we supposed to do?”

  “Just sit and wait, I think?”

  “Why wouldn’t the memory place us at the moment the interesting stuff happens, though, you know, the stuff we tend to remember?”

  Fifth shrugs, “No clue.”

  The conversation ended there as we sat in silence, a waiter coming around and giving me a cup of matcha hot chocolate, and Fifth of the Mist a plate made out of that flesh stuff with what looked like fried grasshoppers on it.

  I grabbed a dozen sugar packets before pointing at the plate, asking, “What even is that stuff?”

  “Hmm, uh… a plate?”

  “No, the material, it looks like it was made out of flesh.”

  “What?” They looked down at the plate, tilting their head, “I suppose it does resemble it. But to answer your question, it’s a mycelium construct. They can come in a lot of colors, but the most common one is red, so you see it everywhere.”

  “Mycelium, hmm. Isn’t that the roots of a mushroom?" I popped the top off my drink.

  “Fungi aren’t plants, so they don’t have roots. Mycelium is its own thing. But I suppose it’s an apt description.”

  “You know,” I said, pouring all the sugar packets into the drink and stirring them in, “I think I saw a documentary about some scientists doing that back home, the mycelium constructs I mean. They were still in the early stages, so there wasn’t anything fancy, but it was pretty cool.”

  “Really? I wonder how everybody else's technology is. I know the general gist of your and the yellow planet's tech. But none of the people I, er, fought were any sort of scientist. You’re the closest I’ve gotten since you’re a programmer, but the subjects a bit too far from anything I know to actually get it. You know?”

  I smirk, “You wouldn’t believe how many times I've felt the exact same while programming.”

  We shared a light hearted laugh, then I took a sip of my matcha hot chocolate and felt my power grow significantly closer.

  “Did you feel that?” Fifth asks.

  I nod, “Loud and clear.”

  Fifth of the Mist looked around the cafe, saying, “I don’t see my cousin or your friend anywhere?”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek, then said, “Was it just you and your cousin that day, or was there a third person?”

  “Just us two, why are you asking?”

  “It was the same for me.”

  They creased their brow, “What are you saying?”

  “I think the memory did start at the interesting part; I’m your cousin, and you’re my friend.”

  There was a pause before Fifth said, “So, we’re just supposed to have a pleasant afternoon to get to the next memory?”

  “Why are you saying it like it’s a bad thing?”

  “I don’t, it just feels… wrong for some reason.”

  I lean back in my chair, “Well, I don’t know about you, but after the month I’ve been having, I’ll gladly take this.”

  We started talking about random things again, and eventually Fifth of the Mist loosened up, the conversation becoming more natural as we finished our food. After the waiters took our dishes, we were teleported to a Dave and Busters mixed with whatever the alien equivalent was.

  And we played the games for a while, both of us introducing our favorites to each other. Mine was Flappy Bird, which gave me my daily dose of schadenfreude as I watched Fifth of the Mist try to get past the third pipe for half an hour.

  Fifth's favorite game, however, was an unholy concoction between arcade basketball, whack o mole, and Tetris, somehow. Even after spending two hours trying to play it, I’m still unable to give it a description beyond that. But even as I suffered karma for Flappy Bird, I felt my core grow closer and closer with every game we played.

  But eventually it ended when the plastic cards that looked like a debit card, which were carrying the tokens needed to play the game, ran out. So we went to the exchange counter, getting a dozen knick knacks like slap bracelets and stuffed animals.

  “I still don’t understand why you like these,” Fifth said, holding a pink slap bracelet with hearts on it.

  I shrugged, “They’re just neat, I guess, or arcades brainwashed children into liking the boring and useless things because they were cheap, and I only like them now because of nostalgia."

  “I support the latter hypothesis.”

  Fifth of the Mist said, still putting one on when we sat at a table, I looked over to them and said, “So, you think it’s time for the next memory?”

  “I think so.”

  We grabbed each other and closed our eyes, feeling a warm, familiar air around me, and when I opened my eyes, I saw my bedroom around me. But it was mixed around with what I presumed to Fifth of the Mists room made of mycelium and wood. And I could sense my core right in front of me, my PC, the sensation of being so close to it overwhelming, like looking at the sun but in a pleasant way.

  Fifth and I didn’t even talk as we walked up to my PC, an empty picture frame on the desk as well. We reached out towards them, and they reached towards us as well. But I felt something hit as I touched it, a dissonance, a distortion.

  Then I was back at the airport. I tried to push against it, but I was at the very center of myself; it was like trying to escape a planet's gravity by pushing against the ground. When I gave up on that, I looked around frantically, spotting my brother in the crowd, talking jovially to an older man next to him. The sight sickening me as I recognised the other man, it had been years since I had even seen a picture of him, but I couldn’t mistake him for anyone else.

  My father.