Chapter Text
Stanley was not, by design or demand, a man who thought much.
It was less that he couldn’t and more that he didn’t need to. It was difficult, really, to experience any complexity of cognition when his entire life was divided into neat little packages, choices already made for him by a narrative he’d long given up on trying to comprehend. Everything he could ever or would ever do boiled down to a very simple set of questions with a very simple set of answers.
Left or right. Up or down. Red or blue. Yes or no. Live or die.
The choices never mattered by the time they’d all been made, anyway. He’d always end up back in his cramped, dim, comfortable-by-way-of-familiarity little office, with the clock tick-tick-ticking in his head and the green text input blinking on the screen in front of him.
It was this screen he blinked back at now. He could just make out his reflection in what little flickering luminosity the overhead light provided; the slump in his shoulders, the set in his jaw, the twitch in his eye. The immaculate, untouched nature of his slate-brown hair and cream-plaid shirt, even though he’d just spent the better part of half an hour chasing the Adventure LineTM down a path he could’ve walked with his eyes closed. And also running in circles while a too-familiar voice rambled on about counter-inverse doors or whatever the hell it was. He’d honestly tuned it out.
He was far too familiar with running in circles. No matter what other shapes they disguised themselves as.
He mulled this over as the computer display returned his blank gaze. He’d had this particular revelation a long time ago, now—what had it been, months? Years? Decades?—but he found himself returning to it often, perhaps if only because it was true. If only because, in a world of misaligned logic and self-imposing paradoxes he’d never quite succeeded in understanding, it was one of few things that was always true.
Because he’d found that even the most constant thing in his existence wasn’t all that constant. Sometimes it wanted his happiness above anything else, and sometimes it wanted him dead. He supposed he couldn’t complain much, though—if the voice wasn’t consistent in its amicability towards him, it was one thing.
He sat back in his chair, observing the empty space in the air where he would often imagine the voice to be. He couldn’t see anything, or hear anything, but he thought he could feel a pressure in the silence, a feeling like someone holding their breath and waiting to release it. In truth, he had no way of knowing—he couldn’t even say if there was a physicality to it at all—but it was nice to believe that there was something there, something for him to aim his very carefully-worded thoughts at. Something for him to imagine was following him through the hollow shell of the building, propping up the crushing weight of the countless empty cubicles.
Something that almost always reacted the exact same way to every decision he made, no matter how many times he made it.
Predictable. The Narrator was predictable. Just like most everything else in the inescapable time loop Stanley hesitated to call a life.
Just like Stanley himself.
His entire existence, he often supposed, could be lived just as well by a coin. Heads for left, tails for right. Sure, maybe it was a coin that sometimes landed on its side and promptly climbed out of a window or jumped to the bottom of the mind control facility or went up and down in the same elevator over and over again. But it was still a coin. A little thing with value, but not much of it. A little thing that would be enjoyed if found but not missed if lost.
A little thing with just two sides. But with one side that was, perhaps, better than the other. Cleaner. Heavier. Worth a little more, somehow.
There was definitely something in the silence, now. A certain disquiet to the quiet—a slight shift in the thickness of the air, a barely-there but there nonetheless prickle under his skin. He shifted in his chair.
He knew, at the end of the day, that he had all the time he wanted. He’d once spent what he’d estimated to be three days sitting at his desk, and not once had the Narrator given in to his own impatience. Stanley could have sat in his chair for as long as he damn well liked.
And so there in his chair he sat. Thinking. An action which he never often thought to do.
Thinking about all the choices he’d ever made. Or, rather, the ends to which they led. Thinking about how, with every story written for him, it was so easy to make the right choices. To lead himself to the right end.
Thinking about a stairwell at the end of a room full of stars. Thinking about his own body, motionless, emotionless, while he hovered above it, just out of reach. Thinking about the resistance of a glowing yellow button against his fingertips giving reluctant way to a click, then silence.
Stanley swallowed thickly, hoping to rid himself of the tightness building in his chest. Failing.
So he did the only thing, besides alighting this train of thought and walking away, that he could think of.
He leaned forward, fingertips resting atop the buttons of the computer keyboard. For a brief moment, he expected to feel dust beneath his touch, but the console was pristine—like he’d never been anywhere but here with it.
With only slightly shaking fingers, he began typing. One by one, the letters blinked onto the blank screen.
Hello?
Nothing happened. He took a deep breath, trying to suppress his own rising discontent, before trying again.
I know you’re watching. I want to talk.
He lifted his fingers from the keyboard and sat back, trying to look nonchalant.
There was a very, very long pause. Stanley was just starting to wonder if he should type something else—or hit backspace and pretend he’d never even tried it—when a reluctant sigh shattered the silence.
“Make it quick, Stanley,” the Narrator said, his ever-scholarly voice masking a hint of frustration. “We wouldn’t want to keep the story waiting.”
Briefly, Stanley was paralysed. He hadn’t actually planned this far ahead—he’d known he’d wanted to speak with the Narrator, but he’d forgotten to decide on what, exactly, he hoped to discuss.
Memories raced through his mind—of things he didn’t like to remember. He thought about every bad decision he’d made, every path he’d walked out of spite, everything he’d done to the Narrator. How little it had all ever seemed to matter by the time he was back in his office.
“Well?” prompted the Narrator. “What’s so important that you’re just sitting here instead of getting on with it for?”
There’d always been a question in his mind. Something he could never help but to wonder.
He couldn’t even say there was a point in knowing, but he wanted to know.
Do you remember?
There was a pause. “Remember what?”
Any of it. All of it.
Everything we’ve
Stanley stiffened, then hit backspace a few times.
Everything I’ve done.
There was another long silence, even longer than there had been when he’d first asked the Narrator to talk to him. He was starting to worry he’d made an error in asking when the Narrator’s voice came again. Quiet. Solemn like a funeral.
“Of course I do,” he said. “You didn’t really think I would just… forget? As if none of this means anything to me?”
Stanley’s breath caught in his throat.
“Really, Stanley, I’d’ve thought this was obvious,” the Narrator tutted. “I mean, we just did the confusion ending. Tell me how I’m supposed to give you an Adventure LineTM when I don’t even remember all the failed self-guided adventures preceding it?”
There had been a moment once, in the expo hall, where Stanley had chosen between two balloons. The Narrator had commented something, offhandedly, about how sometimes you don’t realise how much you wanted someone to say one thing until they say the other thing.
How had he said it, again? “You know, sometimes when you solicit another person’s opinion it makes you realise that you knew which one you actually really wanted all along.”
Stanley, perhaps, hadn’t realised just how much he’d needed the Narrator to forget, right up until the moment when he’d told Stanley he remembered.
The feeling of falling. The inability to move. The complete nothingness, of existing in suspension while time moves around you but not through you.
Stanley fidgeted about for a moment, trying to figure out what to do with his hands and body and feelings, before eventually settling on cupping his face in his palms with his elbows pressed against the corner of the desk.
“Stanley?” The Narrator’s voice was high, and tentative. “Are you all right?”
He peered through the gaps between his fingers at the glowing green text on the monitor. He tried to take a deep breath, but it juddered in his throat, refusing to give him its precious oxygen.
(Was there oxygen in this building? Was he human enough to need to breathe? It didn’t matter. He was preoccupied with other concerns.)
“Stanley,” the Narrator’s voice came again, sterner this time. “Please, focus. We need to get back to the story…”
Stanley lifted his head, shooting a wide-eyed look to that space overhead.
“…eventually,” the Narrator finished, voice softening. “We need to get back to the story eventually. But a few more minutes here won’t hurt, I suppose…”
He was trying so hard to be understanding, Stanley could tell. And he wasn’t failing—but that was perhaps what made it worse. Sure, he’d killed Stanley a couple of times, but only when he’d deserved it. There was no denying that the Narrator did care for Stanley, in the way he always pushed him towards the happiest possible ending, and in the way, now, he showed him such patience.
Which made everything Stanley had done to him all the more abhorrent.
His fingers fell against the keyboard again as he tried to type out something, anything.
O’m sittu
He backspaced furiously, trying again in spite of the growing blur of his vision.
I’m srrhj
“Stanley…?”
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, hissing through his teeth, before trying one more time.
I’m sorry.
He hesitated for a moment. Then, hitting the left button on the keyboard a few times, made a small addendum.
I’m so sorry.
The Narrator was silent. A paralysing moment of fear gripped Stanley when he wondered if maybe this was it. Maybe he’d chased off the Narrator for good.
Maybe the Narrator had abandoned Stanley. Just like Stanley had abandoned him with that stupid skip button.
He must have been visibly stricken, because the Narrator said, hurriedly, “I’m still here.”
And that was interesting to hear.
“You know, sometimes when you solicit another person’s opinion it makes you realise that you knew which one you actually really wanted all along.”
It wasn’t that Stanley had been disappointed to hear the Narrator’s assurance. But as he confirmed that he did still exist, some very small part of Stanley wanted to unhear it, to know what life without the Narrator would actually be like.
To know, perhaps, what it was to have his life in his own hands, instead of someone else’s.
Really, he didn’t know what he wanted.
Did he want to be a puppet for the rest of his endless life? To walk the same loop, over and over, until something in whatever universe held him gave out, until the skybox collapsed and swallowed him into blissful oblivion?
Or did he want to be free? Unshackled, unchained, in charge, but always knowing that there were no re-dos? No resetting to fix the errors he was bound to make?
If it ever came down to it, which would he choose?
He pushed himself away from his desk, chair wheeling about halfway across the tiny room before the carpet’s friction brought it to a stop. His head spun counter-wise to the slow swivel of the chair.
Of course. At any other turn, he could pick between A or B without even blinking. But now, when it felt like it might have actually mattered, he couldn’t make a decision to save his life.
His office darkened slightly, and he frowned. Surely the light was fine—he’d hung around in his office for longer before, and not once had he ever had an issue with the electricity. There would be no reason for it to malfunction now.
“Stanley?” There was something panicky in the voice now, something squeaky and worried and caring and so unearned that Stanley might have choked on it. “Stanley, are you—Stanley!”
He’d slid out of his chair, meeting the floor hands-first. He stayed there, hunched over, trying to control himself.
There was a story to be getting on with. There was always a goddamn story to be getting on with. He didn’t have time for this.
(Not true. He had nothing but time, in fact. That was often part of the problem.)
There was a sharp, abrupt clatter, and Stanley flinched.
“Sorry, sorry,” said the Narrator. “I just figured you’d want it. You seem in need of reassurance, and… well, I can’t think of anything better suited to the job. It’s what I made it for, after all.”
Stanley looked up at where the noise had come from. There atop the desk it sat: the bucket, glistening as ever, wearing its stickers with abject pride.
Of course. Of course the Narrator had brought Stanley the bucket; because he wanted him to feel safe, because he wanted him to be happy. Because he wanted all these wonderful things for Stanley even though Stanley had done so wrong by him, and he’d remembered it.
Stanley curled in on himself. He might’ve screamed, if he’d possessed the ability.
“Oh dear,” the Narrator said, voice tinted with muted but genuine alarm. “I really did think that would work.”
A heavy silence pressed down on the office, threatening to suffocate Stanley where he lay.
He buried his head in his arms, squeezing his eyes shut. Trying to pretend he could be normal. Trying to pretend that anything about anything of this could ever be damn normal.
Trying to pretend he was fine, that he could be fine, that it would be fine.
But he didn’t fancy himself much of an actor. Every thought that crossed him seemed to only make him worse.
Perhaps the best solution would be to stop thinking. Perhaps the best thing for the universe would be if he stopped existing at all.
“I don’t…” The Narrator was hesitant, but unwavering. “I don’t remember everything, if that’s what you’re so upset about.”
Stanley froze. His eyes flew open, though his vision was still obscured by his forearms wrapped around his head.
“Or, rather… well. Hm. It’s actually rather complicated. Well, it’s not really complicated, just… there’s a layer to it. A caveat.” He paused a moment. “I suppose it’s like I can remember, it’s just that I don’t. Not unless I need to.”
Slowly, cautiously, Stanley propped himself up until he was sitting. He regarded the roof with curiosity, and the Narrator took this an an invitation to elaborate.
“It’s—hm. How do I explain this in a way you’ll understand?” He took a contemplative breath before continuing. “I’m not… quite human, as I’m sure you’ll have come to assume by now.”
He had assumed that. He’d’ve figured that humans didn’t tend to be omnipresent and capable of altering their very reality on a whim, though he hadn’t actually encountered one in years or perhaps ever, so he couldn’t have been wholly sure.
“My memories don’t work quite the same way as… other people’s do. Here, let me—“
Somewhere just past the border of Stanley’s perceptible reality, there was a shuffling, then a soft thunk.
“Right now, in front of me, there is a box.”
(So he did have some kind of a physicality somewhere. Interesting.)
“Inside of this box is a set of video tapes, and in each of those tapes is a unique recording of one of your adventures through the Parable. You see, each time you reset, I—well, how do I put this?” There was a faint tapping sound, and Stanley imagined a vaguely humanoid silhouette drumming its fingers pensively against the side of the box. “All of my memories of the previous run are exported onto a new video tape, and it leaves my mind until, if ever, I go back and watch it.”
Stanley, gradually, rose to a stand, looking down at his still-trembling hands.
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” the Narrator asked, in that tepid voice Stanley usually only heard when the Narrator wanted something. (Like when the Narrator wanted Stanley to stay in a room full of stars, forever, complacent and content…)
He shuffled across the room, almost collapsing into his chair, before returning once more to the computer keyboard.
So you DON’T remember, then?
“Again, Stanley, it’s not so simple as ‘I do or don’t’. It’s that I can, it just depends on whether or not I choose to.”
Stanley wasn’t sure he understood entirely. But he understood enough.
He hesitated, thoughtfully, before typing one final message into the console.
Thank you.
For a moment, the Narrator didn’t reply. Then, softly: “I suppose you’re welcome.”
At length, almost with reluctance, Stanley stood from his chair. It was a particular motion he’d become all too accustomed to; a simple, fluid movement that always meant action, that always beheld a beginning.
The world still felt a little sideways. There was still, distantly, a tremor in his fingers.
But there was a story to be getting on with. And he was growing cramped in his office.
He made as if to cross the door, but hesitated at the threshold. There was a curious buzz to the air above him, as if the Narrator was holding his breath.
Stanley turned and, in one swift motion, swiped the bucket off his desk, tucking it securely under his arm. Then, and only then, did Stanley step out of his office.