"Same, Thaddeus Wei."
Stanley and Thaddeus continue their conversation about what comes next.
Stanley: "What comes next after this?" Stanley spoke intriguingly.
Thaddeus: "Well, first, I would have to log you into the CELESTICA files to make this contract a real thing. You'll be under my service and work with my team. Heads up: I am a senior member of CELESTICA, and my team members are among the best in their fields. It might surprise you, you know."
Was this the right choice? I sold myself to a fucking officer of the government. I could've had the chance to be stripped of all my rights, yet he offers me normal things like they aren't normal. Is shelter free, right? Not exactly special compared to money, though.}
Stanley looked down. His shoes were still covered in dirt and mud. The pants were dusty and somewhat better, and his puffer jacket remained crusty, dirty, and vibrant yellow. His outfit whilst he was in Polonian Lepidus for a year. Not an outfit for an assistant to the most important group of the times.
{Will I be a normal person now?}
Thaddeus Wei stepped back, sat down in the chair, and began to be more physically confident. His hands began to do body language once again.
Stanley: "I'd bet on Thaddeus, but what now? Are you going to continue that conversation earlier, before we get to my home planet?
Thaddeus: "Yeah, I will; I have plenty to ask you. First, about that door, right, I—"
Thaddeus stopped speaking almost immediately to point at Stanley's left arm.
"Oh. You can't be serious." Stanley's left arm just dissolved into dust and blew away in non-existent wind.
{H-holy shit. Shit! Shit! Shit! Stanley waved what's left of his arm and stood up, moving around near his seat, figuring out this situation.
Stanley: "T-Thaddeus, what's happening? Oi! Hey, come on!"
He yelled at Thaddeus, who was just using another device he grabbed from his right pocket, which looked like a rectangle mixed with a rhombus.
Thaddeus: "I got two guesses. One, your mind is projecting something else that isn't you inside here. Two, Tallurre and Co. have just injected your left arm with Doxyine Concentrate, and you're heading back faster than I wanted.
Thaddeus sighed.
"My primary guess is that you just got injected." Added Thaddeus.
"Stay calm; I'm finishing up my procedures to set up this contract in your mind and mine. I know that sounds confusing. Give me a few seconds, and I'll be done.
While Stanley was hyperventilating madly and watching his arm fade further, Thaddeus was typing aggressively while looking concerned.
"Not a good day so far." He mumbled to himself yet was heard by Stanley.
Stanley: "Finish up as quickly as possible. This doesn't feel right, wiggling your arm like it's there, but it isn't, like it's invisible." Stanley continued to stare at his arm, looking back at Thaddeus a bit, and seeing something, part of you, disintegrate isn't helping him positively at all.
{Am I dying? I can feel it, my arm. All its fingers and touch sensors are still touching my other hand, yet I can see it. Am I going to wake up missing this arm? My gosh, what is this experience? My fault for agreeing to that contract, I guess.}
"Fuck fuck fuck fuck."
"Oi?"
"Hey?" "Thaddeus?"
"What can I do to stop it?" "I need urgent help and care; it's getting worse."
"Hey Thaddeus, H-"
Thaddeus used his louder voice and said, "You can help me by shutting the fuck up. Time is what I need, and all I am doing is setting up a Neuro-idol pill, which is going to drill the contents of the contract unconsciously in your mind, so that you can't answer to anyone about it."
Around twenty to thirty seconds later, a round, pill-shaped object fell out of the device. It was blank, white, and of a reasonable size.
Thaddeus: "Take it, Stan. Like right now."
Thaddeus took it over to Stanley and plopped it right down in his right hand. His left arm has been fully eviscerated at this point and is starting to dig into his shoulder.
Stanley: "Easy done." As fast as he could, he chucked it down his throat and swallowed the pill, looking at his stomach.
"Bottoms up." Thaddeus had his own pill, which he took quickly and marked something on that device afterwards.
Thaddeus: "Good job."
He clapped twice and spoke again.
"Your best friend, Tallurre, is a smart man. If I kick you out after I registered the pills, he'll know I know. It's normally the CELESTICA procedure to send someone out after taking a neuro-idol pill or being forcefully removed. I'll have to wait until your body fully disintegrates. Please bear with me and prepare for a whole lot of discomfort. It's not exactly a good feeling watching yourself fade.
Stanley: "Say what? Fucking hell. Do I really have to deal with this? It's pretty bad, Thaddeus. I don't feel like I'm going to live."
His tone changes at the start from annoyance to a pure, honest tone for that question.
Thaddeus: "You're gonna live. One hundred per cent chance you will. Imagine a weird nightmare; that nightmare is this, and you're going to wake up from that dream sooner or later.
{That's not a good metaphor. I don't believe that for a single word. Look at it! I feel disabled and crippled! That's not a dream if I am in the now!}
Stanley's fading body keeps losing itself. His feet are now being caught in the erasure of it all, whilst his shoulder goes slower near his head. His right arm is all that remains whole right now.
"Thaddeus, any tips for mentally holding up here? I'm not breathing enough, and this is strange enough for me. I'm sitting in a chair, but my legs shouldn't be holding me like this, looking like this."
Stanley looked like a stump of a human. Left arm gone. Feet, now ankles, are gone. Left shoulder, fading. His face of worry isn't helping him look less sad and pathetic right now as he loses more every second.
"Oh my god, my toes. This looks incredibly uncanny. What the fuck."
"Is my shoulder slowing down? maybe."
"There goes the kneecaps. How am I fine with this?"
"I just saw my left shoulder disappear. What?"
"Oh, my right fingers are next up. I see."
"This is kind of weird how my neck is next on my left while my right just ate my hand."
"You're kind of adapting nicely with the way you're yapping, Stan," remarked Thaddeus.
{I really am not. I'm coping with my words; talking puts my worst thoughts out of my head, while saying some bullshit will take my mind off this horrendous task of enduring losing my body's visual looks. I'm talking like a cornball. I mean, Anything is better than silence since Thaddeus is just looking at me.}
"Thanks, big man Thaddeus. Your help is so utterly appreciated by me."
"Now sarcasm is a tad bit different," said Thaddeus
"It really is, Buddy. Anything to take my mind off this?" replied Stanley.
"Try thinking about that forearm of yours."
Stanley's forearm had just been devoured by nothing, and it now made him look like a toy."
"Yeah, fucking good one, genius. I'd appreciate your amazing kindness here, Big Thaddeus."
"I don't know where that name came from, but no one will ever use that name." Said Thaddeus, sarcastically.
"Hey Thaddeus?" said Stanley.
Thaddeus took a short breath and said, "Yeah?"
"How many outside people like me do you work with?" Thaddeus looked at him seriously.
"Well, now and then, I talk to people to get the job done. Not a lot, though. It's mainly me researching and discovering new things and information with other Imperial groups like CELESTICA."
He paused.
"You're in a bit of a unique situation. I-I am not normally the one who goes and chats with the people who encounter anomalies."
"Am I unique?"
Thaddeus looked at Stanley's face. A young man who's had his share of happy, sad, and dreadful events. Experienced a life foreign to him. What was it like? To grow up rich and to lose it all and then leave that whole side of the world? To learn without a mentor?
"Yeah, Stan. I can confidently say that all people are unique."
"Wouldn't that make me normal then?" Stanley's eyes opened up. That blank look was losing its touch.
"Uh, no. I mean, everyone is special. Each goes their own path, whether it is depressing or joyful."
Stanley's eyes shrank back down again, heading back to his face of pure nothing.
"That's not the answer I'd hoped for. I'm trying to open up here, you know."
Silence. Only the sound of dust. dissolving. Then Thaddeus spoke.
"How is that going to change my answer, silly?"
"I kinda thought that sentence was something people say to make them feel better, knowing they know the other isn't actually cool or unique."
Thaddeus made a "humph" noise.
"I'm an honest man. I don't get to know a lot of the people I meet. I feel lonely most of the time at work. Who wouldn't?"
"That mentality might push people away, you know," replied Stanley.
"Why?" Thaddeus began to show his first signs of curiosity, evident in his body language as his hands shifted.
"People hate honesty. It reveals too much to their faces in person when they are too used to hearing in their heads. This always happens for liars, introverts, and confident people. maybe more. That's really all I can think of when I talk about that topic."
Silence from both ends. Thaddeus looks at Stanley. Stanley looks down.
"Question." Muttered Stanley.
"We don't have much time left. Yeah?"
"Do normal people you talk to go back to their normal lives?"
"Thaddeus?" "Thaddeus?" All he could do was look to the side while squinting in thought.
"No. Everyone I've ever met since this job happened has been changed mostly negatively." He looked down while Stanley stared back at him.
"Could you name the positive ones?"
"Huh? Yeah, I can, actually." "My family, my wife, Sara, some co-workers of mine, probably three or four, and my hometown. Maybe you if this thing doesn't get messy."
Thaddeus's hands closed together, like he had finished an important speech.
"Not a lot of people. right."
"Yeah."
Silence.
"Not reassuring either that it could get worse for me."
Stanley broke the silence after they both glanced back at each other a few times.
"That's the detail you hold on to? Negative much?"
"Yeah, I am a bit negative. Though I've experienced much joy at Suran and Lepidus." "Like what exactly?"
"I mean, at Polonian Lepidus, I was a music producer. I think I'm well known in the underground scene there. I do think I have a talent and was pursuing it with everything I had with my friends and ex."
"Ex, you say?"
Thaddeus's curiosity came back. He wasn't trying to get to know Stanley by barging in now, more like an actual friendly conversation.
"Yeah. I'm single now. "Relationship of seven months fucking down the drain. Plop!"
Thaddeus took off his hat and took another hard look at what remained of Stanley. No arms, thighs nearly gone, the left side of the neck and torso gone—an amalgamation of a person. A minute estimate until he fades fully from the dreamscape.
"Yeesh. Stan. That's rough. We can talk more on the music side of your life next time."
"Yeah, sure, I guess." Silence.
"Final question before I lose my body and fade into fucking nothing." "Yeah?" Stanley took a breath.
"What will you do once you find out if my home planet is one giant anomaly?" Thaddeus took a quick deep breath and said:
"By that time, I would've figured out if it's dangerous or not. If it is, the whole planet goes into an investigation, authorised by the anomaly affairs division. We will forcefully get our answer and figure out anything and everything."
"What if it isn't?"
Silence.
"What, if it isn't, Thaddeus?"
Silence. Then an answer came.
"Nothing, Stanley. Everything will remain the same. We won't meddle in that topic afterwards." "If."
Thaddeus looked at the last bit of Stanley, his neck and head. He was visibly uncomfortable with his facial expressions, always looking at nothing that was where his body was.
"If my planet were an anomaly, what does that make me?" He tilted his head slightly and said, "It made a very unique person. An anomaly child." Stanley chuckled. Only a little could Thaddeus actually hear.
"Heh."
"When will you contact me?" Silence.
"If you want an estimate, maybe in a week. Gotta set this shit up properly." "Thanks. Thaddeus." "I could tell that one was genuine."
Thaddeus ushered in a small wave.
Stanley smiled back greatly.
"Bye," said Thaddeus.
"Enjoy your time. The next moment might be crazy."
Darkness.
Darkness was all that swallowed every inch of Stanley's brain.
No thought could remain, no memory was there; anything remotely hinting at life was gone.
It covered everything that was, would, or could be.
Life was gone. Nothing existed.
A place where God or hell couldn't reach.
Was this death? Afterlife? Magic?
Nothing could be made out.
It was nothing. You can't describe it. No mind could come close to describing the mindfuck that was nothing. The smartest minds wouldn't be able to comprehend this.
Nothing Started. Everything Ended. Life died.
Beyond colours or imagination.
Then an eye appears.
"Not Yet."
"Mr Kleitos? Wake up."
Stanley opened his eyes as if they were just open.
"H-hey, Mr Ufushimi."