Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 15:30:48 GMT
From: Scotty T <thepoetboy@hotmail.com>
Subject: Mirrors-3.txt

Warning -- this section is far stranger than the previous two.  Fortunately
things will settle down into a more reality based story after this, so
don't let the wierdness get ya down. :)

Warning about the warning -- the story will never become an entirely
reality based story -- the dreams and so forth will continue to be a part
of the story for as long as this ride takes.

Here's a formal apology to the author of Mirror Mirror (to whom I have
already emailed my apology) for any confusion cause by our similar titles.
I didn't think ahead to check for similar story names.  Sorry!

NSYNC story -- no sex -- no basis or comments on the sexualities of any of
the NSYNCers.

And a reminder -- I'm not the narrator (Eric) and his views about NSYNC are
not necessarily my own.  So don't hate me for what he may say. :)

On with the story!

***

Part 3

I guess I should also say that this is a story about addiction.  You've
heard of addiction -- it's what keeps the average North American 30 pounds
overweight, over using caffeine, keeping up with the Jones' and staying
online when there are tons of better things to do.

Hell, most of you are here because the name NSYNC was flashed in the header
-- there's an addiction.  The guys know it -- the five of them are trying
to reel you in as much as they can.  They are marketed and packaged to sell
-- they are a product.  That's one of the reasons I've never liked them as
musical artists.  Everything's too cutesy and chummy.  I don't know what I
can trust and what was engineered for record sales.  I mean, the Christmas
album was complete marketing -- music was barely even considered in its
creation.  The guys are shown as religiously devout people and then they
put out a Christmas album with all of the religion stripped away?  Was that
their gift to the Jewish or Hindu fans?

But you're not here for my rant -- you want my story.  There's a part of
you that is drawn to this like your eyes are drawn to a car wreck.  You
want to see me hit bottom.

And then you want to live vicariously through my success.  Sound about
right?

I ran from the concert -- turned away from the 14 year old who was staring
at me like some flesh and bone saint and ran.  The announcement of the
cancellation was coming over the speakers when I burst out of the
auditorium and into the parking lot.  I ran to the bus stop, pacing like
some overdosing freakshow until my bus showed up, and got the hell out of
there.

The plan hadn't just failed, it backfired.  It wasn't a regular backfire,
it was the kind of explosion that would have had Einstein slitting his
throat.

What-ever happened on that stage, what-ever made him stop and stare at ME
of all people, ruined everything.  There was no hope of escape.

And let me tell you, I'm not some net kid who think's they're emailing a
star.  I've met them.  "Did you see such and such where what's his name
scratched his whachamacallit?  That was a code -- he was talking to me!"
The code is always something stupid -- something the average person does
all the time without noticing.  "Didya see when he crossed his legs?"  "See
that nose scratch?  That meant he loves me."

I'm not one of them, and it wasn't any subtle or planned signal.  He
stopped an entire concert to stare at me.  It shook him up so much they had
to cancel the damn thing.

My dreams weren't all mine anymore.  I wasn't crazy -- I was a freaking
lunatic.

I don't claim to be a genius -- that's the last thing that can ever be said
about me, but I don't think it was such a huge jump in logic from A to C
here.  He recognized me -- it shocked him.  It couldn't have been something
as simple as me looking like some kid he went to school with.  The reaction
just wouldn't have been that big.

I transferred from the bus to the subway and sat on the red, scratchy seats
-- oblivious to everything.  You can really let yourself go when you know
your stop is the last one.

But I refused to go to sleep that night.  It was tough after so many months
training myself to do nothing but sleep.  Somehow, until 6 am, it worked.

Failure was not a surprise, but it was silent.  No dreams came.

The knocking came at 9.  Loud, quick, excited.

My head hurt like an over-squeezed melon, but I stumbled up and to the
door, looking out the peephole and seeing some guy's shoulder.  Common
decency is to stand directly in front of the damn hole -- it leads to the
proper people being ignored.

"Who is it?"

The knocking stopped.

"Oh my God."

"What?  Who is it?"

His face came into view and my breathing stopped.  He was staring at the
door in distorted, open mouthed shock.  "It's Joshua.  Let me in, Eric."

My knees gave out and I found myself on the floor, holding it in, holding
everything in.  Trying to find the breath to breathe -- anyone's breath.
On the other side of the door was the proof that the world was not the way
I had been taught -- the sign that somewhere science had added a couple of
numbers together the wrong way and constructed a useless world view -- the
proof that dreams were more real than anything I'd been presented with in
the waking world.

And I couldn't bring myself to let it in.

"You've got the wrong apartment."

"I've got the right one -- you're voice gives you away, Eric, I've
memorized that voice."

I press my forehead against the cool, real feel of the door.  But it was no
more real than anything -- illusory colour, more space than substance, made
of tiny quarks dancing with steps I can't even imagine.

"Just walk away, Joshua.  Nothing can be gained here."

There was silence -- the sound of the universe before the explosion -- the
sound that will come when everything grows cold.  And the sound of his
heartbeat -- the pulse in his mind, his hand on the door, sliding down and
stopping opposite mine.  The warmth I could feel through the wood.

I shouldn't have been able to hear him whisper.  Not through all of that
space.  "We don't know that."

Wiping away the tears, the hysterical fears, and entering into some shared
calm, I stood and opened the door.  Our eyes met and I knew it was him,
recognizing the off-stage relaxation.  The Joshua that exists away from the
fans, stripped of the packaging and marketing.

I took him in my arms and squeezed him, held him long and hard as if I were
trying to pull him into me.  Holding like a limb that had been lost -- and
that I couldn't release.

It felt right.  More right than anything I have ever felt before or since
-- the ultimate calm that comes with enlightenment -- a realization that
there is no separation -- that who you were meant to be and who you were
meant to be with were interrelated equations that solved each other.

And for that moment we were solved.  The man I held was me, as much me as a
reflection.  But like a reflection, there was a separation.  A space that
exists even when you press your hand to the glass -- the millimetres of
lightyears of infinite separation.

And I let him go.  Pulled back and stared into his tear streaked face.

"How did you find me?" I asked.

"I've seen all of this, Eric.  The university, you waving from the balcony,
the view from your bedroom window.  It only took me a few hours to find
you."

"And why did you find me?"

His fingers were between mine -- interconnecting like two gears in a single
machine.  Warm and hard, working fingers.

"The same reason you found me.  I had to be sure."

"Of what?"

I pulled him into the living room, pushing newspapers and clothes off the
couch.  The door swung closed on it's spring mechanism.

"I don't know."

He fell back onto the couch, pulling me down beside him by our hand.

Our hands.  Plural.  Two.  Four if you count the other ones, the ones we'd
forgotten since they weren't being used for contact.

"And you're real," he whispered, first staring at me, and then around the
apartment.  To the pill bottles lined up on the coffee table, to the dust
over everything, to the ripped shirt with the blood that I'd never been
able to just throw away -- it still smelled of my attacker.  "It's all
real."  His eyes came back to me.  "And you look like shit."

And the stare.

"I haven't been sleeping well."  I forced a smile.

"Tell me about it."  His lips didn't so much as bend.

"You didn't have to come here."

"You didn't show last night -- after the concert.  I was asleep as soon as
I got back to the hotel, as soon as I deflected everyone, but you weren't
there."

"I didn't get to sleep until 6 this morning."

"And I was already awake and halfway here by then."

I look away, expecting my reality to twist and reform.  Somehow thinking
that our realization would alter everything.  We'd seen the emperor's new
clothes.

But it changed nothing.

"Expecting something to happen?" he asked.

I nodded.  "I'm expecting anything.  A complete breakdown of the old
reality."

His arm was around me, warm and right.  "I am awake, right?"

I leaned my head on his shoulder.  "For now."

"Good."  He was smiling.  I knew he was -- just as I knew where his eyes
were looking, that the back of his knee was itchy, that he felt this was
right too.  I could see those eyes -- the odd shape, the focusing that
comes from the dark eyelashes and light skin.  The dance they did whenever
our eyes met.

That dance was real -- not just a dream element.

And then his cell phone was ringing.  The computerized Mozart from his
pocket.  He hit the button and held it to his ear without looking away, and
without me looking back.  "Hello?"

I went over to the balcony, opening the door and letting the wind in.  It
had snowed overnight -- I'd watched it when I was trying not to sleep,
trying to keep the communication closed.

If we made a deal, set up a plan so we'd never both be asleep at the same
time.

I could hear his phone conversation from both sides.  It was like I was
hearing what he heard, recognizing the deep voice and it's southern accent.
Lance.

"Where are you, Josh?"

"North York.  I'll be back by noon."

"We're supposed to be at 92 by ten."

Joshua's voice tightened.  "Then you'll be without me.  Tell them I'm
sick."

"Are you sick?"

"I'm fine, Scoop, I just have something else to do."

He better not plan on doing me, I thought.  Joshua laughed behind me.  I
turned to him.

Lance sounded annoyed.  "What's so funny, Josh?"

"Someone just said something funny, J, I'll see you at noon."

There was a beep as Joshua hung up.

"You heard that?" I asked, pushing my hand against the cold glass of the
window.

"Of course," he smiled.  "Those concerts haven't deafened me yet."

But I didn't say it, I thought.

"Of course you . . . "  He trailed off.

I heard him swear as clearly as if he'd said it out loud.

"Can you hear what I'm thinking?"

I nodded.  "I think so.  And I could hear Lance as if I had the phone to my
ear."

He stood up and met me by the window.  "This is strange."

"Too strange for me."  There was a small smile on his face.  "Oh come on,"
I said, "this has got to be way off base for you too."

For a moment there was no facial response.  I could hear his thoughts in a
cloud -- the workings perceived as nothing more than a drone of hundreds of
voices.  Conflicted thoughts that didn't register in his eyes, too
subconscious to affect his body -- but more and more the voices were saying
no.  This was not way too off base.  When the voices were all speaking
together, he spoke.

"Eric, you've got to understand that my life has been made up of
impossibilities.  A tv show when I was a kid, huge success now, band mates
that are like brothers to me.  I've gotten used to the miraculous."

"Yeah, well I haven't.  And I can't make space for it, Joshua.  I've got
classes, I've got friends.  I've got a life to live and I don't need
someone else in my brain.  It's crowded enough in here with just one of
me."

I walked back to the couch, just to get some space.  I was trying to think
quietly, trying to keep my thoughts from rising out of the background
noise, hoping that it made them inaccessible.  Meditational techniques I'd
abandoned years ago came back and I started counting breaths, trying to
silence everything else.

"Why're you counting?"

3 . . . 4 . . . 1 . . .

He was behind me.  "What're you doing?

2 . . . 3 . . .

I could feel pain, but it wasn't mine.  It was spreading through him.

"Stop it, Eric!"

An image of him appeared in my mind, like the one I used of me for my own
relaxation.  Stressed body areas were showed in red -- everything else
ranged down into greens and blues.  His head was a violent red.

4 . . . 1 . . .

His yell was deafening. He was down on his knees with his hands to his
head.
  A yell that loud could never be vocalized.

The counting was gone -- lost.  Pain swam through my thoughts, but this
time it was my own.  It flooded everything, throwing open doors, releasing
feelings and memories consciously locked away, and those I never knew were
there.

And then there was the calm.  The lack of pain, the silence of thought.
And his breathing.  The soft double bump of his heart beat.

"Are you alright?"  It was him, and vocal, heard in my head just seconds
before my ears caught it.

I was.  "What was that?"

"You were too loud.  You were thinking too loud.  It was deafening."

I was conscious of doors swinging open, areas of my mind freely accessible.
There was also the double vision, the view of the apartment from two
distinct places.

"I'm sorry."  I pressed all four of my hands to the floor and pushed,
trying not to tangle extra legs and feet in the process.  "This is too much
for me."

I turned to look at him and saw myself.  I was watching both of us
simultaneously, watching me watching him watching me and watching him
watching me watching him.  Two strands woven, twisted into one.

And then I felt the doors closing.  His eyes went dark and my vision
returned to normal.  Slam.  His thoughts were gone.  Slam.  Two arms two
legs.  Slam.  Slam.  Slam.

We caught each other, leaning so we wouldn't fall.  My mind was quiet,
following a single train of thought and processing one set of perceptions.

The apartment was silent.  The walls held, the floor was steady.  External
reality was holding.

And I felt alone in a way that I'd never felt before -- an alienation and
singleness beyond imagination.

It's something that's very hard to explain to people who have always
existed individually.  (How many true individuals there are is something I
don't know.  Joshua and I might be unique -- or we might be common.  Ever
known something without knowing how?  Seen places you've never been?  Had
an idea that comes from a source you can't identify -- but you know it
couldn't have been you?)

And the stare.  I looked into his eyes, looking for the part of myself I
could no longer find and those eyes held nothing for me.  They were as
distinct and dead as anyone's.

The glass had come, separating the reflection from the source.

"What did you do?" he asked, in a husky, terrified voice.

I found my voice and reinforced it, making whatever happened seem
intentional.  It was what I'd wanted -- the freedom and separation.  "I
shut it down."

The voice had no echo.  It was sound and nothing more.

"Get it back."

He was blinking back tears, wrapping his arms around himself like a man in
a blizzard.

"No," I said, forcing the firmness.  I stepped towards him, pulling him
into my arms.  He shivered.  "Neither of us could live like that.  It was
ruining us."

His voice was muffled by my shoulder -- his breath making my shirt hot.
"It was the best part, Eric."

I was pushed away and he was through the door into the hall.  The sound of
his feet as he ran down the hall was the only break in the stillness.

That's when the true distance became apparent, the space between me and
everything.  Anything.  Him.

I guess this isn't a story about addiction then.  Can you understand that?
Somehow I'd always loved him, and always thought of him as part of me, his
thoughts as mine.  It explained why I was so quick to pick up instruments
-- because he knew music.  I was struck dumb wondering what else I'd gotten
from him.  When you subtracted him from me, what was left?

So love -- this is a story about love.

***

End part 3.