Was it stolen?
Or was a promise only ever a promise to try.
What of our promises now? Will the echo of them resolve against our original intent?
A whispered "I promise you'll be safe" to a lost child is only the promise that you wouldn't hurt them.
We couldn't promise for others.
She's gone.
Pepsi looked at the smashed out store in the center of the old mall, the store sign reading "_OUR___S" and they see the empty space where Sony's home used to be.
"It was ours. At least while we have it."
Pepsi turns back, the echo of Sony's laugh still bouncing in their history.
The echo of the Ridley guns reverberated across tile, faux marble, and finally settle into a small oasis in the center of the mall where Pepsi sleeps. At the first crack and sizzle, they sit up wide awake and activate the prield defenses, praying that these raiders are looking for food, not people.
The bell, three tones in succession, echoes off glass and marble and tile and arrives at your ear.
You perk up. Pepsi sits up and looks across at you.
"it's time"
"It always is," they responded with the kind of detached worry we mistake for boredom.
Pepsi and FedEx trade gear and start to prepare.
"Pepsi..." She says it like a curse, but one that sat unused for decades.
"Pepsi." Disconnected and dying, the echo played across our faces while we sing a song to remind the future of what they lose.
"I hear you" Pepsi responds.
"I can hear you, and I'm coming soon"
Now, footfalls across the mall.
Across the cybersphere, Pepsi is watching the planets shift under their eye.
When the echoes arranged themselves on the screen, the pattern suggests a safe connection to the other worlds.
Pepsi sighs - and spoke the names of the chosen. Across space, the named snap upright and begin transmission.
"Can you even understand, " Sony hisses while she shoved supplies into a worn Jansport backpack, "can you fathom th... the power your echo holds here?"
Pepsi kicked his feet back and forth over the edge of the counter in what used to be Macy's men's section. He is sighing, and avoided Sony's eyes.
Pepsi looked around their home. Well, maybe not a home, but they were working on it.
Across the food court, a lost scream echoed off the carousel spinning and sings that same song
"I can't take it, no more, no more
No more, no more baby..."
The horse might be still, but still he spins. Endlessly.
Pepsi looks across the Mall, let his eyes trace the echoes placed here by dreamers and doers and those who never chose.
"are we still here"
Pepsi's lips hold open at the end, like a smile, one that is sadly aware of what comes next. Over in the other sections, the other cohorts rise to a purpose.
You tell me, back before we say it, that it's never really over. That an echo will bounce and even if you didn't pick it out in the silence it's energy continues to shift rock, ripple water, and floats like smoke right across our vision.
I think I hear it, and even if I didn't, it still moves me.
Tomorrow, we held the echoes of our lost framework, the one that fit so nicely over everything, the one that holds your old favorite sweater that you haven't found yet, and when your eyes open we saw an empty world full of joy, even if it's just a mirror memory.
Yeah, it's just a mirror memory.
One day, no one will be around to remember you. Or, at least, no one will remember you as you were.
What will you do then? Will you be the echo of yourself? Or a new sound?
The y2k bug caught us off guard in our time. No one saw a problem with dates until just 3 months before, and when midnight 2000 hit, no one was prepared for the collapse.
Well, we're calling across the echosphere to see how your universe, the only one who stopped the bug, is doing.
… how'd it go?
"Hey, you know what?"
'No. I don't'
"Oh. That's right. I forgot."
'Yeah we all do, eventually. Echos don't always fade the way we want.'
"You can say that again."
'I am.'
"Did you know her?"
Didn't we all? She left though, happy, dancing.
And we didn't leave. We stayed right here, until she came back as a visitor to a town that seemed stuck in time, until the echo dislodged itself from history and shouted, "Remember?"
There’s a ghost here that talks to me. They say,
You know, I don’t know any more than I used to, now that I’m here. There isn’t such a thing as /knowing/ for me now
"Oh. So why have a conversation with me if you can’t know anything?"
Yeah.
"I think it’s cool you’re here, anyway."
Thanks, me too.
It's late, and the shops gates are halfway down, and the food samples from the lo mein place have been tossed, and I'm still standing right where I always have been and the mall will open again and again and again until one day it just can't anymore.
And on that day every echo will live forever.
We were born to run rabbit run away with me run run run
Stop - p - p - p - ppp.
The clock can't, so it's up to you to stop and remember that now is the place you'll wish you were next.
Yesterday we see the results of our vibrant youth finally old enough to look back and realized we haven't lost anything. Four days or weeks or years (centuries) may pass but you can (will, have) look and there - see yourself as the echo started years ago and still bouncing (bounces, bounced) around.
"We've got to get out of this place," echoes like sludge across and over the pristine walls of the abandoned food court in Star Plaza, popping off empty storefronts and crisp tile to fill the ears of no one. A soundtrack for empty space, the inverse of joy stuck here in a dying dead die mall.
-"your coffee is getting cold." I guess that's the price you pay for living here and there, never stopping long enough to look and enjoy something; yeah it was hot in the past, and since it will never be back then again, I'll just wait for the echo of her saying, -
You never realize it's your last Time moves forward endlessly you never realize it's your last time moves forward Endless repetition is a virus that Live while you can and listen for the Echoes never die they just repeat soft Enough enough enough we can't Move back to the past you never had
He gets a New York charge, he gets a Florida charge
He gets a DC charge, he gets a Georgia charge
He enters the pleas that remind him of the good times
He enters the pleas that remind him of the better times
- “Failed again?”
‘Yes.’
“That’s what I thought”
‘I know.’
She grips her id card between her left forefinger and thumb and taps the corner on the marble counter. Each tap echoes empty across the room.
“Ok. Try again next time?”
‘You already will.’
“Good. Glad to hear I’m consistent”
Coda. Repeat -
The mall is emptier than usual - the kind of empty that tempts echoes to reach farther than they ought. One echo in particular has been (will be) traveling alone; a vibration parallel to your alternate life. It is without source, like the ghost of a fable, that holds variables never solved for.
