Who are you? ~ A Short Story
"Who are you?" What a complex question! It's a maze of self-doubt, dreams and hopes, expectations and reality. More often than not, it's incredibly difficult to answer. I wrote a short-story about it.
“Who are you?” She sounds like her smile: twinkling with curiosity, teasing just enough.
Her eyes narrow with mischief as she sips from her drink—iced latte, even though we’re in winter. Then again, the coffee shop is warm enough for it.
I don’t answer her immediately; just laugh. The kind of laughter that's equally teasing, equally roguish. It lingers like a smile in my face, moving away from the intrigue of a mystery to the fondness of the truth—all while I toy with my drink, the spoon sloshing the reddish-gold tea; it matches my nail polish in such an odd manner.
“Come on, tell me!” She leans forth as her eyes narrow again. They are warm; so warm and brown. “Who are you?”
I shake my head and fall back into my chair. What can I say? It’s not an easy question to answer; I have been too many things.
Until two weeks ago, I was a radio-astronomer working on the largest array built in Australia, hurrying to decipher an odd transmission. Everything after it was a haze, filled with adrenaline and the need to reach a conclusion—for me, for the others, for those awaiting the answer. I worked on it non-stop, yet it carried on day after day after day until I wrapped my mind around it and solved the enigma. There was a reason for that signal, a cypher of a cypher, a history to recover, another to redo. A truth from out of this world.
It is always that, to be honest. Almost as if my mind couldn't think of anything else.
Yet that affair ended all too swiftly. So much that it lingered on me, like an impression I couldn’t quite remove. It left too many unresolved thoughts, each rimmed with a myriad of questions… and I could solve none, just keep swirling around them. What if I had done this instead of that? What if the truth actually laid elsewhere? And worse: what happens now that I'm not there? How does it continue? Is that the end?
But I cannot answer those questions. Not now, at least, because I no longer am a radio-astronomer.
Right now, I’m in the impasse between identities. Lost in a sea of musings, each second spent there threatening to drown me, tickling with the need to find something more, something new, or something that was but has not been fully closed.
It keeps bringing me back to everything I’ve been.
After all, I have had quite an eclectic path. One almost impossible to explain or summarise without missing key moments, key elements.
Before being a radio-astronomer, I was a journalist and so journeyed to the farthest space station in the galaxy to interview people—or, more accurately, beings. Non-humans, everyone I could think of. It was an experiment, one that had been consuming my mind until then, and so I carried on with it—roaming, talking, listening, writing.
I talked with so many, and learnt so much more. About them, about their cultures, about the worlds they come from and the history that preceded them. So dissimilar to ours, so incredibly non-human, so beyond anything I'd seen before. What they shared began—almost always—as a vague concept, difficult to imagine, yet clearer and clearer as I put it into words. Collating those stories was no less than the challenge of solving the riddle while working as a radio-astronomer… and how I came to be both was precisely the same reason: my never-ending curiosity, my insatiable need to speculate.
Neither lasted as much as I wanted or hoped, and although I want to return there—to that space station and those who live there—it is not possible now. Perhaps I'm not in the right mood to go back to the stars.
Turns out I have a… tendency to hop around. From one world to another and another, from one role to another and another. All because intrigue guides me and, somehow, I cannot say ‘no’ to a good, promising idea.
That’s why, before being a radio-astronomer, and long before my journey through that space station, I was a wanderer crawling through in a dungeon. A twisted, never-ending sequence of rooms that looped on itself by the will of a Lord who refused to allow me to narrate my own story. The Lord was a pest, yet meeting it was in equal parts infuriating and amusing; one moment I'd be laughing at whatever nonsense it spewed, and another I'd be furious.
But I was not the Lord… although that’s not entirely true. I was the lord of the Lord, or better said, not only the Lord but also the wanderer trapped in that dungeon. The one searching for her purposes and, instead of pondering it like a normal person, ended up crafting this labyrinth simply because it was, perchance, a less direct, more timeless approach. It was maddening, truth be told, to think of all the combinations within that claustrophobic place, to pass through the fourth wall separating it from here and back again, only to prune pathways and add new ones, reviewing, replaying, considering every unlinked point that I may have left.
It was a learning experience, that I can tell, and it taught me much.
Enough to have me ponder again, forget the conversation and slosh the tea. I stretch my smile with another tease, letting the moment stretch because—to me—this is the most precious part of me. The answer I know and cannot confess that easily.
I have been so much more.
A winged being who crafted a reflection so vivid they blended and merged. A ceramic doll, first, and then a wooden one. A robot in a land far away (that perhaps is only far away in time), tasked with a quest with too many possible outcomes. A cohort of nobles in a decadent setting that later became so much more. A bartender in a floating bar, a potions-maker centuries old, a fae, an alien AI construct.
My favourite, though, remains the time in which I was a cat—or the semblance of one, inspired by the real deal and mimicked to the best of my abilities. It was not just a cat, but an elite spy tasked with stopping the undead’s forces from taking over the oldest city in that world. These were not the typical undead, but researchers avid for knowledge, because what else can you do with an eternity of unlife than learn? At least, that’s how I think of it and how it will be, across the many worlds and legends I visit.
“Oh, come on! Tell me!” She pouts at me, frustration scrunching up her nose.
I look down. To my tea, and the stories locked within in. Those I could tell based on how that red-gold hue spirals into stillness.
When I speak, there is shyness on my voice, laced with a truth. The one I share. “I’m a writer.”
A little author’s note…
I don’t share much of my writing here, but I wrote this one when I was struggling a bit with defining myself. I think this is something every author goes through, so allow me to you a bit of a personal story.
Besides writing books, I also publish interactive speculative fiction through the mobile app Unearthed Stories. It is a complex medium, but I love it. Imagine twisted plots with branching, and the pretence of agency I have to give the reader—then add literary tricks, ergodic tricks, endings that complement each other, with paths calculated at random (mathematically!), all written in scripting (a mix of text+code). It is a different medium to books, and it allows me to explore themes in a different way than books…
But some people don’t consider it literature. Don’t consider it “worthy” or even “reading”. Some even made that abundantly clear to me: I was not a writer, I was less.
I disagree with that.
It doesn’t matter what other tells you—you know who you are, what you are. It doesn’t matter if you’re famous or not, trad or self-publish, doing only shorts or only 10-volume series. If you write, you’re a writer.
Don’t let others’ perception define you.
Livia~
PS: Yes, the short-story references my own interactive stories. I considered referencing them in the author’s notes, but then I thought doing so detracted from my message. If you are curious about which is which, feel free to check Unearthed Stories (on Android, or iPhone/iPad).