2020-09-22 1:00:57 ¶ ● ⬀ ⬈

## i had this in my drafts as ‘nice elias’ but this isn’t a nice story

wildehacked:

> It’s a stupid idea, but since the alternatives are rapidly narrowing to “wait for something to get lucky and kill me,” Jon decides to try Knowing again. What’s the worst that could happen? The most likely scenario is that he wakes up on the floor with another horrific migraine. He supposes he could send himself straight into another coma, and maybe that’s the best-case scenario for the world at large, so.
> Jon turns on the tape recorder, and closes his eyes.
> “How do I stop being the Archivist?” he whispers, and focuses on it. He imagines someone sitting next to him who he might compel, someone to slake the goddamn hunger, and then imagines them fleeing him–and following. He narrows all the intensity of his Eyes on the question, mercilessly sending the searchlight of his Gaze into the world to find the answers he Seeks, to scour the minds of anyone who might know, any hint, the merest whisper, and drag the answers out of them and into himself–
> –and the world whites out. It’s not pleasurable like an orgasm, but it contains the same existential pause, the same fleeting moment of nothingness that Jon has felt before gritting his teeth and jerking into his own hand, only it isn’t brief. He loses himself in the white-hot emptiness of Knowing, and he has no idea how long it lasts.
> When it’s over, he’s no longer sitting at his desk in the Archives. He doesn’t know where he is–it’s a room he’s never seen before–but he recognizes the sigh from somewhere above him, familiar and fond.

> Keep reading