…

  Most of the group funneled into a sort of exhibitor hall. Some split off. One joined up. Rebecca, Anna, and I took stock of what we wanted to visit and were given a useless, unnavigable map, at least in my opinion.

  The map did show us the exhibit hall was circular, not rectangular. The ceiling however, made that fact obvious enough. Dark red painted metal beams made a skeleton around the ceiling, with a few salt spotlights placed ingeniously. The very middle, or center, of the ceiling had natural light, with only a salt window to keep the outside world outside.

  The indoor environment looked relatively standard, with some quirks. The standards included polished beige-colored stone flooring, pillars, sandstone walls, and an emphasis on oranges, yellows, and browns. The non-standards, however, were very non-standard. There were trees. Trees. They made good markers as a grid to determine what is where and how far is what. Plus, each tree looked slightly different. They were at different heights; some had different fruits, and some even had different leaves. None of them looked radically different from one another, though. There were also birds that flew from these trees, as well as the metal beams. It was somewhat warm and muggy in the exhibit hall. Not a fan.

  Despite having a plan, a map, and several markers, we walked around aimlessly in sort of a spiral pattern. Near the entrance, oh, look. Book. Many books. Like a shark smelling blood, I honed into one of the exhibitor’s booths. I couldn’t tell if it was…I believe her name was Via? As I was trying to confirm their details in my mind, Rebecca and her friends began walking in a different direction. My attention split and I froze up somewhat.

  My instincts made me want to keep on a direct path to answers. I felt drawn to that booth- possibly everything that’s held me back could be found by consuming those books. Yet the logic was with Rebecca. So, I called to her.

  “I think I’d really rather not,” she said.

  Aversion, she says. There had to be something I could do. Did they have beef? I’d really like to get gravy out of today and not bones. I kept frantically looking at my two options. A third option popped into my mind.

  I ran over, introduced myself given I was looking for a Via. She confirmed her identity. We shook hands for a moment, I shook more animated-ly than her. I noted I wanted to learn more, and was interested in joining the book club. I got details, information, all conveniently written for me to keep around. Then I ran back and waved goodbye.

  …

  We passed by traveling exhibitors. Rebecca took the fall to engage with them. She tried to be as bubbly as she could, to hurry and escape the exhibitors’ attention. They had small carts with notepads they were giving out. I don’t know; I assume they’re a smaller survival group or something. They asked if I wanted a notepad. I ignored them at first with a smoky grin. Then they got pushy, and all I gave was a “Thank you,” and pushed their crap away with open palms.

  Rebecca accepted their annoying paperweight. Once we left, she continued her smile until they were out of her sight. She promptly tossed the notepad into the closest waste bin.

  After minutes of wandering and almost constantly chatting, they found the booth for Spirit Fest. Four horses- white, red, black, and a speckled coat from left to right took up the majority of it. They each had different kinds of particles they ran on: white ran on sparks of fire, then red with fluffy vaporous clouds, black with dust and sand, and finally, speckled with a spray of water. Again, patterns. Patterns. I nearly shoved the group out of the way after my will was buried under an avalanche of sudden interest.

  My hundred questions were: “What was the logo’s inspiration? How long have you been operating? How extensive is the research so far? Where did the concept originate from? Do you all have similar backgrounds?” And I kept going for minutes.

  They very fittingly told me to hold my horses. They, as in, only two representatives. One naturally gravitated towards me, while the other took on clerical or marketing outreach duties.

  “A lot of us suspect there are four, I guess, underlying spirits or focal points that drive the roots of every thought in the City. We’ve normally only found two of the four, though. Concepts seem to fold and come together, connections that shouldn’t make sense but do.” He explained.

  “Is it like some sort of collective unconscious?” I asked.

  “Well…that would imply either the vast majority of actions people commit intentionally pull towards the will of an extremely limited amount of free agents, or it would mean that literally all of our thoughts are carefully amnesiac subdivisions of, again, a small set of free actors in order to keep us, or any new actors they’re not aware of, immersed & unaware we’re being very specifically controlled.

  If our actions are being pulled in the direction of those free agents, that’d mean we’d operate on oracle-like prophecies, where we may fight tooth and nail to avoid our fate and might get far, nearly popping the bubble that keeps us into their intentions, but would be destroyed before we could successfully defy our destiny, one of which likely isn’t given to us by a benevolent will.

  If our thoughts are being controlled by means of anonymously feeding fragments of those free actors’ will, that would mean each individual life we have is pretty much a waste of time. We’re not doing what’s our own benefit, rather the benefit of that conscious entity controlling us. If we’re the cells, then our purpose is more to die for their sake and not live for our own sake. In other words, if our thoughts are just jumbled thoughts of theirs, nothing we do matters in the first place.”

  “So what about the zombies?” I was more looking for whether or not they played a part in this theory.

  “I dunno. Zombies are zombies. Don’t they just have a disease that makes them feral, people-eating creatures that used to be humans?” He slung back.

  “Yeah, probably. I guess it wouldn’t make sense to factor in things that wouldn’t have thoughts in the first place. So, what’s the problem comparing this hypothesis to a collective unconscious, or I guess four,” I replied.

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  “Well, there would be likely signifiers. If all our actions were controlled, you’d see some people who’d be in intense pain over trivial things. Commonly accepted practices would seem like agony to them, and to most people, no one would know why. They’d be a free agent, one of the few that’d be outside any of the collective unconsciouses. What we would consider normal would be practices that not only put immense pressure and pain onto that free agent but also stress them out, ideally to the point of being converted to the collective unconscious’s will, or they would die from shock, or the horrific nature of a seemingly mundane action. If anything, there would be a seminal event to attempt to ritually convert the free agent to the fold, which would nearly automatically alert any other outsider free agents that there’s a hivemind based on how distraught the injured free agent is. If that were the case, we’d see someone who’d be in a never-before-seen level of distress.

  If all our thoughts were controlled, we’d know one thing. We’d know who is what and what should go where. Maybe we don’t know why. But the moment something is out of place, we would be compelled to do what it takes to put it back into place. I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like I have a sudden urge to do what a collective unconscious would think is the right thing. Just look at the convention. It’s been pretty relaxed. You would think people would be goosestepping around, constantly paying attention to detail, doing their best to make sure everything is perfect in ways they don’t quite get why. In the event there’d be a free agent, they’d begin to recognize patterns in others’ behaviors. You’d see people occasionally who would put together a sort of monomyth based on heuristics and even empirically piece together those controlled peoples’ lives at different stages. As a result, that free agent would be very judgy, quick to not entertain anything that could potentially lull them into a hypnotic pattern of behavior that would be indistinguishable from those who are controlled. After enough analysis, the collective unconscious would do everything in its power to maintain a moral high ground while destroying the free agent, lest the free agent becomes its own collective unconscious. They would associate that free agent with being antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid, or something: anything it’d take just to contain the damage. We don’t find anyone like that. Sure, we’ve seen people have their differences, but everyone makes up and gets along in the end. Everyone has their place in the City. There’s just no one who makes valid points while appearing like a supervillain or a monster we’ve never seen before.”

  “That’s fair. I could see how you got to that conclusion,” I said without really making a judgment one way or another.

  They talked about the logo, associating the black horse with salt or the white horse with sulfur, I guess, holding a flaming bow. I wasn’t sure if he implied the black horse was made of salt, or salt-like. It all felt somewhat disjointed, as if he had a particular dialect or underlying language I didn’t totally get.

  In the end, they gave me a themed notepad and pencil to get me to leave. Not what I was interested in, but I guess it is nice to have something to keep my thoughts in one place with. It looked cool, anyway. It had the same logo with the horses, but uses halftone shading, along with bold colors that almost makes it look like a comic book. There were also stylized splashes of paint, I guess to symbolize blood…? Each splash of paint was a different color, though, corresponding to different coats of each horse.

  It felt like there wasn’t anyone who was nearly as engaged as Rebecca. No one else had any requests. Rebecca and I took turns pointing out booths we wanted to check out. It was like Anna and her group orbited around us like a weak magnet. It’s like they didn’t try to make themselves matter.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as bad. I was next to Anna and Rebecca like a lost puppy. I was engaged, though. I feel like, maybe, I’m not that different, but I notably tried. I asked them about each exhibit. They knew some of the survivor groups and didn’t know anything about others. Other than survivor groups, the other exhibitors were popular organizations that collected either in J’s purview or the surrounding areas, like E group, D group, or I group.

  Oh, there’s that band. We almost passed that band they were bickering about. The logo was a part-white-horse, part-person. It looked like a flaming arrow had come from them, although it was hard to see whether they had shot it or not, as it was directly in front of them. Dynamic pose, impressive angle. The band’s name had a cool font, too.

  I asked about what they played, what their mindset is when it came to music, and other questions that pretended I knew anything about an entire area of human behavior I had no frame of reference for. At least I tried, and they seemed pretty excited that I had questions, so at least someone appeared to be happy between the two of us.

  They were a rock band…they claimed to be a metal band…Anna nudged me and joked around, saying they just sounded like the kind of music you’d hear while listening to a radio drama and a mystery-solving group is being chased by ghosts. The primary point of contact had face paint on, and it looked like they were very careful about how they visibly enunciated their words. Their guitarist, who had a mouthless mask, waved to me and offered to show us a sample. Thankfully, the band had chairs for us to sit and listen with. So, they did just that.

  …

  Cool. I’m not a big fan of when music gets stuck in my head, and I feel like that’s almost exactly what this music is. Catchy. In other words, what isn’t strictly my thoughts feels like an enemy from outside trying to waste my time and energy. It was good music, though; at least it was music that I could listen to over and over again. I don’t know. I don’t know music. From what I could grasp onto with the lyrics, of which were thankfully easy to follow along with, there was a lot to discuss. So, with the rest of our adventure in the exhibit hall, we did just that.

  Exhibit hall: survived. I collected half of a worthwhile share of information. The other half was sacrificed to keep up with Anna’s group. Next came heights. Thankfully, there wasn’t just a giant drop-off before glass railings, rather a solid, brick obstacle to hold me back from my inexplicable urge to dive in.

  We took a break. Some of us had snacks. Rebecca’s attention wandered from the group, instead studying the layout of what’s next. I tried not to mimic her. I couldn’t help but catch something she began to fixate on. I could see she was blankly staring out in Joh’s direction, at the very least. He was far on the other side, a few floors down. There are no zombies around this time despite her zoning out. I can see it in her eyes, though.

  I want to look longer, although it’s difficult. What my reason should be is it’s creepy, however I actually just feel like looking into her eyes is disorienting me. Her features began sliding around, my environment made less and less sense, and I began having issues registering objects. But what was in there? I could see plumes of lava. I could see the scarlet red sky despite the endless ocean of her green eyes.

  Was it anger? What exactly was the conflict? It could be anything, and unless she tells me what, I can’t figure out what angle she would want me to have, if at all. I could also be misinterpreting her focus entirely. Maybe she’s just spaced out.

  He looked back, though. Then, he waved and gave a warm smile. I just scowled. It felt like he had a vision of how others ought to behave. Well…I know I shouldn’t be biased towards how I feel to one or another…that is…until I have a reason to believe what intuition I’ve had. It just feels like miasma, one of which I’m not the only one I’m dealing with, I think, as I glance back at the visibly-sulking Rebecca.

  We still weren’t in the right social environment to ask her candidly. Plus, she promised. She promised she would tell me what exactly was the conflict. I just have to trust her. The fruits of my labor show the seed of my thought. If I don’t show that I trust her, I likely can’t really trust her. She’s been the only one who has shown any trustworthiness, so if not her, then what am I to do?

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