TMA characters as texts my sister has sent me:
Martin:
Tim:
Rosie:
Melanie:
Daisy:
Elias:
Martin:
Tim:
Rosie:
Melanie:
Daisy:
Elias:
Hello, John.
Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself.
I’m assuming you’re alone; you always did prefer to read your statements in private. I wouldn’t try too hard to stop reading; there’s every likelihood you’ll just hurt yourself. So just listen.
Now, shall we turn the page and try again?
Have you ever thought about what would have happened if Nikola had killed Jon when she kidnapped him? How the story would have gone? How things would have changed?
Elias would have been annoyed, obviously. But how hard would it really be to pick someone else? Everyone in the archives is at least partially marked by the fears, yes there would be delays, but how hard would it be to shape collateral into a usable pawn?
I don’t know how Tim would feel. How do you describe that rage of losing the one you blame for everything, combined with the grief of losing somebody who could’ve almost been a friend? Whether or not your original purpose remains, you’re displaced.
Daisy and Melanie wouldn’t be all too affected- an annoyance of course, perhaps a pang of loss, guilt mavbe? But what could stop them powering forward. There’s more important things at stake than just one man.
Basira cared about Jon. She liked him, even; thought he was funny. She’d be sad. Not devastated, but it’d be a loss. The kind you feel through a sheet of fog, you know the pain is there but you can’t quite reach it.
But Martin. Oh Martin. Can you imagine how he’d sob? How he’d fall apart? The loss of a love who loved you back whilst neither of you ever had the strength to say it? The denial of every idle daydream, every menial thought of cooking together, of cuddling on a sunny morning… Everything that mattered rotting away like wasted meat.
And the unknowing. Without Jon there to plan and organise, would Melanie and Martin have been spared the experience? Without Jon, Elias would have to reassert control, see who would be the best pick for the new archivist.
Would Martin watch frozen as Nikola paraded around, wearing Jon like a fur coat? His brain screaming at him that ‘Jon’s skin didn’t sit like that on his body’ whilst his heart rejoices at the return of his love.
And Tim, in that very attempt to tackle Jon, would he have been torn apart by fierce automaton hands? There’s no chance to click a detonator if your opponent isn’t who you thought they were; it’s impossible to react that fast.
Would it instead have been Melanie? Seeing this unfold before her, infernal rage unleashed by loss of control. Would she have watched willingly, as she sent herself, and her only remaining allies to fiery, painful deaths?
Perhaps.
But how are we to know?