Chapter XVII15.IV.2025
"Let's try it one more time, would you mind?"
Caithe heard a sound of snapping fingers and began looking around in panic. What is going on?! Where is she?! How did she get here?!
She was in an almost empty room. No windows, all walls purely white and roughly textured, piercing neon lighting. Despite its emptiness the room felt very cramped, especially with how low its ceiling was, not even three meters by estimate. And the air, oh stars, air here smelled horribly awful, like the stink of a burning chemical lab.
She was sitting on a very uncomfortable metal chair, and her attempt at moving for a better position didn't get her anywhere. Her legs straight up refused to even register the intention to move, but continued to transmit an unusual, dumb pain to her. How remarkably odd.
The only other person in the room was a weird middle-aged looking individual with unhealthily pale skin and a furry face, sitting across from her in an armchair which clearly didn't belong to this room's aesthetic - it was pompously crimson and well-crafted, with a rectangular pattern going across the fabric. The person themselves wore a very old-timey looking black and white suit with a horribly red tie - and yes, they intriguingly had fur on their face, specifically on the upper lip. It was of slightly grey tint and was concentrated in two rather large spots, like thas person's some sort of a prehistoric figure. Were they a prehistoric figure? Is she in the past somehow?...
Oh right, she was talked to.
"Very sorry, but could you repeat this again, please?"
To these words she got a sudden, unannounced slap in the face, without the other person even moving - and it hurt like she was already slapped just there ten times over, and she almost fell from a chair in recoil and surprise, her body then forced back with a sturdy invisible force. She looked back at the person, her eyes suddenly full of tears.
What is going on...
"Katherine, I'm beginning to lose attention with you." - the person said in a voice that tasted like cosmic vacuum - the coldest, dryest, most emotionless voice she had ever heard in her life. - "You are to listen attently when a superior talks."
"Who's Catherine?..."
"For fuck's sake, how many times do I have to do this..." - he muttered. - "That's your name, Katherine. Isn't it?"
Caithe knew it wasn't, but it probably wasn't a good idea to argue about it under such pressing circumstances.
"I guess it is..." - she accepted.
"Oh fucking finally..." - they stumbled on a weird look Caithe was giving them for a moment - "...how much do you remember, anyway?"
Well, last she remembered she was finishing up a new chapter in a bed at night, then got to sleep... is this a dream? It can't be a dream, right? Suggesting it is will probably go poorly...
"...Not much, I guess?"
"We can work with that," - the person exhaled with relief. - "Where do you think you are, Katherine?"
Caithe looked around again. Other than her chair, the room featured a long flat piece of unidentifiable white material on metal support legs, a large featureless pot in the corner fit for a decently-sized plant, and an imposingly-looking thick metal door. She would've thought it to be some sort of a cleanroom in a science facility if not for the stink, though on the other hand maybe the stink was exactly because of...
She got another remote slap in the face. The person didn't even budge in their armchair, but it was clearly them doing it somehow, why though?
"What are you thinking about for so long?! When asked, you are to answer immediately!" - they rudely ordered in a raised voice. - "Where do you think you are?"
"Ummmm.... some sort of a chemical laboratory place under renovation maybe?"
"...What?! Where'd you even get that? Obviously not that! You're in a mental asylum."
"What's a mental asylum?"
That question made her conversation partner straight up hang. Caithe could've pictured a spinning wheel of fate going above their head.
"Oh, and also if I may ask, why are you being so rude to me? If I did anything wrong I'm sorry, but I don't remember that..."
"Rude?!" - the person asked in shock, - "Katherine, I am your father, rightful owner and benevolent ruler, I can address you however I please. You are to accept it with profound gratitude, and..."
"What's a father?"
"...and you are not to interrupt amidst my orations." - a third punch came about, and this one was so hard it did kick her over with the chair. Her legs lifelessly fell to the side, and she tasted blood in her mouth. This was... yup, the most pain she probably ever felt (beats falling off a tree by a considerable margin), and she still did not see any reason for any of it.
"Why are you doing this?..."
"Stand. Up."
"Ummm..." - she'd love to, but any attempt at so much as moving her legs even a centimeter seemed to be interrupted.
"Oh what is it, you can't? You know why? I'd tell you why. It's because you irresponcibly ran away to that delusional "Cosmos" of yours, resisted your rescue, crashed my best ship, and almost killed my most obedient servant - obedient unlike you, Katherine. Well who's laughing now? You won't be running away anytime soon, and you only have yourself to blame for it. Brilliant, isn't it?"
...this explained nothing and spawned more questions than answers, since as far as Caithe remembered none of this ever happened - but they seem to disagree on stuff as basic as her name, so it's better to get this part straight.
"I don't remember ever doing that and actually what other Cosmos do you even mean? And could you..."
"What "other" Cosmos you ask?" - they interrupted, - "oh that nonsense you came up with, the one with so-called "archons" and "planets" and other deceitful lies." - Caithe couldn't believe her ears. - "Oh I know that face you're giving me now. You remember exactly what I'm talking about, right? Well I'm glad to inform you that it was all fake. You made it all up! And I had my men tear it all apart so it will never exist again. Isn't it brilliant? So you are now to forget that delusion of yours without question and to never mention it again, or you'll force me to wipe your memory again, and again, and again, and you don't want to do that now do you?" - the person stood up from their chair, drilling Caithe with their hateful gaze from almost two meters above. - "I tried oh so gracefully to erase it, but no, you're hellbent on forgetting literally everything else but this waking pipe dream. Quit it. Now. Your name is Katherine, you're in the blessed nation of Starscape, and you are owned by me because you are my spawn, and it's all facts as solid and unmalleable as that the sky is gray."
"...bbut the sky is blue..." - in the shocking realisation Caithe had no willpower for contesting any other talking point here.
Starscape. That was a universe of her written creation. This couldn't be happening, this by all accounts shouldn't be happening, but if it were to...
"Oh yeah. The sky, blue. Of course, of course... You're totally crazy here, good thing I finally locked you up. Just so we're clear: you're a total disgrace. To the shareholders, to the press, to the nation and to me personally. Were it not for the throne's future and the Lord's interests, I'd long have had you hanged."
...than this person would be its emperor, Yinlogon. Last in a long line of corrupt rulers, whom she had slated for overthrowal without much exploration into their... no, his character - beside an occasional statue, on which he always wore a ceremonial mask. She did imagine him with fur on the upper lip, though. That was how textbooks pictured prehistoric dictators, so she went for the vibe.
Yinlogon turned around, eigenspaced the armchair and reached for the door.
"Next I visit you are to come to your senses and adopt manners of proper thought."
"Can you at least put me up from the floor?..."
"Not my fucking problem."
He shut the door with a sound so sharp and loud Caithe's ears started buzzing. Then she heard the click of a key.
She scooched herself to under the white plate, curled in a ball embracing her still dysfunctional knees and cried for what felt like hours in deafening, all-consuming silence.
***
Caithe was feeling hungry. And thirsty. And utterly devastated and tired. And everything still hurt. And her legs hurt. And the air still stank. And the gravity here was clearly higher than usual, pressing her into the floor tile ever so slightly fiercer. And she was still sobbing without even realising it. All of those would not be problems she would ever have to deal with nor was taught to deal with (besides the gravity thing, but that was more the problem of laying on the floor) in her home world...
Was her home world even real? It was in her memory, fully, from earliest childhood up to what would've been some cycles before her fifteenth birthday. While all of this Starscape stuff she always believed to have made up. Could it really be in reverse somehow? Could an archon really construct such amounts of fake memory?
One thing is for sure: no one, not a single soul in the Cosmos could've ever subjected another to the pointless cruelty she just witnessed.
Emperor Yinlogon did, in fact, have a child in her story, though she was named Kris, not even close to Catherine (what kind of a name is that even). Kind of a self-insert character, generally regarded as insane for her progressive ideas, she broke out of the Emperor's tower by herself and joined the rebel movement. But she could never be that Kris! The girl's four years older than her, much cooler, sassy, self-esteem through the roof, and her hair isn't scarlet but blond...
...which upon checking, Caithe's hair now, apparently, also was.
In horrifying disbelief she began ruffling through her hair, getting it tangled up in her fingers. It felt wrong to even touch, so dry, thin, easily tangled in knots. It just wasn't hers. And the color of it was visually so unnaturally, artificially blanc, way more so than she imagined Catherine's... Was it the lighting here? It was so hard to tell colors with this contrived neon.
This very lighting almost made her overlook it. Almost unnoticable, there was a single tiny patch of pale red deep inside her thick white mane saved from complete bleachy obliteration.
It was all a big lie - everything that the Emperor said. Of course it was. But Caithe had no idea if that should make her feel any better.