ST: I'm waiting.
MG: I'm thinking. (pause) Find somebody to replace John. It's not the Wake, but it can distract me for a little bit, and I'm, aheh, touchy as can be once I come down from the Wake anyhow. Having somebody else was a relief for those times. Then die.
ST: Marie...
(ST sighs)
MG: I'm going to be killed by The Redlight if I manage to live five years, doctor. There's no getting around that. Forgive me if my plans are somewhat sketchy before that point, because besides the intense unlikelihood of my living past this year anyways, there's no point to doing anything besides just supporting myself and producing a surplus and contributing to the family whenever possible. And after five years, I'm definitely dead. The Messenger to Him in the Gulf is a Prince-killer. A few of the yuggothr are Prince-killers, but none of the ones on this world. Princes don't die easily, and The Redlight isn't going to be convinced to just let me be, live and let live.
ST: Then let's pretend, Marie, that you somehow manage to live more than five years. The Redlight isn't a problem anymore. What will you do then?
MG: I have no fugging idea, doctor. You're asking a caveman to consider how he's going to travel to Neptune. He doesn't even know what Neptune is.
ST: Then think on it, will you? Next week you can tell me what you've come up with.
(MG sighs)
MG: And what's the point?
ST: The point is to give you a reason to live more than five years. I don't like having patients who don't have any idea what they're going to do in the future because they're convinced that they'll be dead soon. Even if they're suffering from fatal diseases, I still do what I can to convince them to figure out what they want to do past the time that they're supposed to be dead. It gives them something to aim for. You're more likely to let yourself die if you feel that everything is settled and that maybe it's just for the best if you would simply lay down and go to sleep.
MG: I'm not going to kill myself, Doctor Thurgood.
ST: I'm not saying that you will. You keep on saying that it's mental things that are most important in a fight between leviathans or Captains, and that if you want to heal yourself, you have to have a reason to want to heal yourself.
(MG sighs)
MG: Fine. I'll think of some stuff and tell you next week. Can we drop it for now?
ST: Yes. How is life at home right now?
MG: It's as fine as it could ever be, doctor. Zelia helped me make breakfast for everyone four days ago. I'm wondering if I should make a tradition of it to give her another thing to cling onto once I'm gone. Like the boots. But maybe it'll just keep the wound raw for longer, to give her yet another thing to remember her dead sister by. She might prefer to simply forget all about me and let go and move on.
ST: She certainly wouldn't, Marie.
(pause)
MG: You're right. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be the best decision for her to make. She's five, anyways. It should be easy for her to forget me. I shouldn't make it harder on her.
ST: Didn't you wish that you remembered more of your grandmother?
MG: No. Why should I want to? Why should I care about her? I don't remember anything but her funeral. There's no attachment there. It would be best for her.
ST: There is a difference, I think, between not remembering much about your dead grandmother, and not remembering much about your dead sister.
MG: When she's thirty years old and has only the faintest memories of me, how will she be hurting from not knowing more about me? She'll probably have forgotten everything by then, in fact.
ST: What's your biggest problem, Marie?
MG: Excuse me?
ST: What's your biggest problem? What is it that, more than anything else, holds you back?
MG: People, maybe. I could do more if I weren't so worried about some people. Or about not being a person. But it's justified. I'm growing distant from regular people. Half of the time when I'm eating dinner with my family, I drag a book to the table. It's just easier to not talk to them and pretend that they're alright because at least I'm eating dinner with them. (MG sighs) People are almost an abstract concept. People are important. Sure. But I can have trouble deciding why this person in particular is important. And I'm too flashy.
ST: What do you mean?
MG: I'm showy in a fight. I can jump out from the shadows and ambush as well as the next person. But I can't keep up the stealth approach. After that first blow I'm in the open, I'm throwing fire, I'm moving at my target in a beeline, I'm not bothering at all to keep myself hidden. Most of the time, this works. The full-out open approach makes me a bit more excited, and that's almost as important as anything else in a battle. But when I have to go at it stealthily, past the first blow, I just cant' get it together well. Me and complicated tactics don't exactly mix well, either. I've lost plenty of limbs for both problems.
ST: You mentioned the Dreamlands last week. How does that place work?
MG: A lot like Lovecraft said, actually. I have to wonder if he was a dreamer. Maybe that was how he became involved in all of this in the first place. You can tell that he had a very different relationship with the Dream Cycle stories than with the rest of them. There really are cats there. One probably affected the other. I've been there on a couple of occasions. I don't really deal with it much. There are other Captains who I leave that job to. Mercy Wheel practically lives there. The last time I went there was to deal with the me-deg. All Dreamlands have their similarities. You can navigate them all pretty well once you've figured out a few.
ST: There are others?
MG: Every world has one. I've never tried to find out why. Mercy Wheel probably knows, but I don't often talk to her. The yuggothr know it all very well. They're very concerned about their own Dreamlands, you see. It's all split up and torn apart and divided between all of these other Dreamlands, from what I understand. It's because their world doesn't really exist anymore. The me-deg figured out how to cross from Dreamlands to Dreamlands by using the yuggoth portions of them as bridges. I don't think that they bother with ordinary star travel anymore.
ST: Do the yuggothr try to stop the me-deg?
MG: No. The way that the yuggothr see it, and I can see where they're coming from, and they're right, even if it meant that I had to deal with some unnecessary trouble at one point, is that if the me-deg depend on the Dreamlands of the yuggothr, then the me-deg will be more than willing to help out if the yuggothr are endangered, because if the yuggothr go, so do their Dreamlands. It's worked, too. The yuggothr can trust the me-deg pretty closely, and without me even considering them to be insane for it. I might have to deal with the Dreamlands again soon.
ST: Why?
MG: There's something acting up, and it has ends in both this world and in our Dreamlands. Supposedly, everything will go just fine if I fix the problem on this end, but I know pretty well how things like that go. No doubt I'll be spending more time than I'd like— which would be any time at all— in the Dreamlands before long. The yuggothr say that the Dreamlands are some sort of collective subconscious Jungian-sounding nonsense like that. I'm pretty sure that this is one of those cases where someone is trying to explain things in a language which wasn't designed to be used to explain those things. It's like trying to explain quantum mechanics to someone in, I don't know, whatever it is that Eskimos speak. (pause) I've got some things to do. Is it time to go yet?
ST: Looks like it. Don't forget to come up with what you're going to be doing with your life six years from now and past that.
(MG sighs)
MG: I won't. Goodbye, doctor.
ST: Good— Marie?
MG: Yes?
ST: Do you mind if I borrow the notebook?
(pause)
MG: Sure. Why not.
ST: Thank you.
MG: Goodbye, Doctor Thurgood.
ST: Goodbye, Marie.
End of Transcript Four
MG: I'm thinking. (pause) Find somebody to replace John. It's not the Wake, but it can distract me for a little bit, and I'm, aheh, touchy as can be once I come down from the Wake anyhow. Having somebody else was a relief for those times. Then die.
ST: Marie...
(ST sighs)
MG: I'm going to be killed by The Redlight if I manage to live five years, doctor. There's no getting around that. Forgive me if my plans are somewhat sketchy before that point, because besides the intense unlikelihood of my living past this year anyways, there's no point to doing anything besides just supporting myself and producing a surplus and contributing to the family whenever possible. And after five years, I'm definitely dead. The Messenger to Him in the Gulf is a Prince-killer. A few of the yuggothr are Prince-killers, but none of the ones on this world. Princes don't die easily, and The Redlight isn't going to be convinced to just let me be, live and let live.
ST: Then let's pretend, Marie, that you somehow manage to live more than five years. The Redlight isn't a problem anymore. What will you do then?
MG: I have no fugging idea, doctor. You're asking a caveman to consider how he's going to travel to Neptune. He doesn't even know what Neptune is.
ST: Then think on it, will you? Next week you can tell me what you've come up with.
(MG sighs)
MG: And what's the point?
ST: The point is to give you a reason to live more than five years. I don't like having patients who don't have any idea what they're going to do in the future because they're convinced that they'll be dead soon. Even if they're suffering from fatal diseases, I still do what I can to convince them to figure out what they want to do past the time that they're supposed to be dead. It gives them something to aim for. You're more likely to let yourself die if you feel that everything is settled and that maybe it's just for the best if you would simply lay down and go to sleep.
MG: I'm not going to kill myself, Doctor Thurgood.
ST: I'm not saying that you will. You keep on saying that it's mental things that are most important in a fight between leviathans or Captains, and that if you want to heal yourself, you have to have a reason to want to heal yourself.
(MG sighs)
MG: Fine. I'll think of some stuff and tell you next week. Can we drop it for now?
ST: Yes. How is life at home right now?
MG: It's as fine as it could ever be, doctor. Zelia helped me make breakfast for everyone four days ago. I'm wondering if I should make a tradition of it to give her another thing to cling onto once I'm gone. Like the boots. But maybe it'll just keep the wound raw for longer, to give her yet another thing to remember her dead sister by. She might prefer to simply forget all about me and let go and move on.
ST: She certainly wouldn't, Marie.
(pause)
MG: You're right. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be the best decision for her to make. She's five, anyways. It should be easy for her to forget me. I shouldn't make it harder on her.
ST: Didn't you wish that you remembered more of your grandmother?
MG: No. Why should I want to? Why should I care about her? I don't remember anything but her funeral. There's no attachment there. It would be best for her.
ST: There is a difference, I think, between not remembering much about your dead grandmother, and not remembering much about your dead sister.
MG: When she's thirty years old and has only the faintest memories of me, how will she be hurting from not knowing more about me? She'll probably have forgotten everything by then, in fact.
ST: What's your biggest problem, Marie?
MG: Excuse me?
ST: What's your biggest problem? What is it that, more than anything else, holds you back?
MG: People, maybe. I could do more if I weren't so worried about some people. Or about not being a person. But it's justified. I'm growing distant from regular people. Half of the time when I'm eating dinner with my family, I drag a book to the table. It's just easier to not talk to them and pretend that they're alright because at least I'm eating dinner with them. (MG sighs) People are almost an abstract concept. People are important. Sure. But I can have trouble deciding why this person in particular is important. And I'm too flashy.
ST: What do you mean?
MG: I'm showy in a fight. I can jump out from the shadows and ambush as well as the next person. But I can't keep up the stealth approach. After that first blow I'm in the open, I'm throwing fire, I'm moving at my target in a beeline, I'm not bothering at all to keep myself hidden. Most of the time, this works. The full-out open approach makes me a bit more excited, and that's almost as important as anything else in a battle. But when I have to go at it stealthily, past the first blow, I just cant' get it together well. Me and complicated tactics don't exactly mix well, either. I've lost plenty of limbs for both problems.
ST: You mentioned the Dreamlands last week. How does that place work?
MG: A lot like Lovecraft said, actually. I have to wonder if he was a dreamer. Maybe that was how he became involved in all of this in the first place. You can tell that he had a very different relationship with the Dream Cycle stories than with the rest of them. There really are cats there. One probably affected the other. I've been there on a couple of occasions. I don't really deal with it much. There are other Captains who I leave that job to. Mercy Wheel practically lives there. The last time I went there was to deal with the me-deg. All Dreamlands have their similarities. You can navigate them all pretty well once you've figured out a few.
ST: There are others?
MG: Every world has one. I've never tried to find out why. Mercy Wheel probably knows, but I don't often talk to her. The yuggothr know it all very well. They're very concerned about their own Dreamlands, you see. It's all split up and torn apart and divided between all of these other Dreamlands, from what I understand. It's because their world doesn't really exist anymore. The me-deg figured out how to cross from Dreamlands to Dreamlands by using the yuggoth portions of them as bridges. I don't think that they bother with ordinary star travel anymore.
ST: Do the yuggothr try to stop the me-deg?
MG: No. The way that the yuggothr see it, and I can see where they're coming from, and they're right, even if it meant that I had to deal with some unnecessary trouble at one point, is that if the me-deg depend on the Dreamlands of the yuggothr, then the me-deg will be more than willing to help out if the yuggothr are endangered, because if the yuggothr go, so do their Dreamlands. It's worked, too. The yuggothr can trust the me-deg pretty closely, and without me even considering them to be insane for it. I might have to deal with the Dreamlands again soon.
ST: Why?
MG: There's something acting up, and it has ends in both this world and in our Dreamlands. Supposedly, everything will go just fine if I fix the problem on this end, but I know pretty well how things like that go. No doubt I'll be spending more time than I'd like— which would be any time at all— in the Dreamlands before long. The yuggothr say that the Dreamlands are some sort of collective subconscious Jungian-sounding nonsense like that. I'm pretty sure that this is one of those cases where someone is trying to explain things in a language which wasn't designed to be used to explain those things. It's like trying to explain quantum mechanics to someone in, I don't know, whatever it is that Eskimos speak. (pause) I've got some things to do. Is it time to go yet?
ST: Looks like it. Don't forget to come up with what you're going to be doing with your life six years from now and past that.
(MG sighs)
MG: I won't. Goodbye, doctor.
ST: Good— Marie?
MG: Yes?
ST: Do you mind if I borrow the notebook?
(pause)
MG: Sure. Why not.
ST: Thank you.
MG: Goodbye, Doctor Thurgood.
ST: Goodbye, Marie.
End of Transcript Four