Jax awoke with a start. Not yet able to sit up, she lay in bed with her eyes open. She felt it was of the utmost importance not to shut her eyes, not even to blink, until she could sit up. While she couldn't remember what dream she was having that caused this, she remembered that Kaufmo was a part of it somehow.
It had been a week since Jax's un-Abstracting, and she had been, at a very low level, dreading going to bed at night, because every night was the same: fall asleep, have a nightmare, wake up, turn over, fall asleep, have a nightmare, wake up, turn over, and so forth until it was time to get up. Only once did she not have nightmares, and she attributed the ones she did have to coming back from the dead.
Pomni continually asked her how she slept every morning, and every morning she would lie and say, "Like a baby." She had considered telling Pomni about the nighmares, but she could never remember them well enough to report anything; only fragments, such as this bit happened at the Snowy Summit, this bit happened in the lounge, this bit happened at the beach, this other bit had Ribbit in it, things like that. However, she also considered that holding herself back from talking like this was one of the things that led to her Abstraction in the first place. Well, if she was not going to discuss it with Pomni, there was only one other person who she could discuss it with.
Jax hesitantly put her hand on the door to the Abstractorium. She had been aware of this room from her visits with Pomni and Ragatha, but she was feeling apprehensive about being in such close proximity to the tank again. Looking down at the floor until the door had fully opened, she took a deep breath and looked up. It was a dimly-lit room, designed to allow the performers to see without agitating the Abstracts, with a bench on either side and only 2 inches of memory glass separating her from her former existence in oblivion. Walking slowly inside, she remembered what Abstraction felt like; being aware of things, still having access to her memories of being alive, being able to tell the other Abstracts apart, but never being able to communicate with anyone until the memory glass. Reaching the wall, she stood there and stared out into oblivion for a bit. Until last week, that had been her home, existing as a disembodied consciousness, encapsulated in a morass of garbage data, being forced to understand everything about her existence as a brain scan file, while not being able to do anything about it.
The silence and the dim light were soothing. Jax inhaled deeply and sighed. Off in the distance, she could see two Abstract forms doing zero-gravity acrobatics. Another Abstract form floated down from above and looked at her.
"Kaufmo?" Jax asked. The Abstract form blinked at her. "Well, if you're not Kaufmo, maybe you can get him for me." She put her hand on the glass and the Abstract returned her gesture.
In a dark room, a single yellow light came up, illuminating a stage across the perceptual divide. Not a large, grandiose stage like the one in the Circus, but a smaller one, as in an old nightclub. While Jax could not see any walls, she felt like this was a very small, intimate room; someplace there would be tables with satin tablecloths in Realspace.
"Kaufmo?" she called out.
The silhouette of a short, stocky clown faded into view. "Jax? That you?"
"Yeah, it's me."
"You, uh... you've changed."
"Yeah," she chuckled, "I'm a girl now."
"I meant, you're alive," Kaufmo sounded a bit betrayed. "I saw that jester girl Abstract through the glass, and then you both just kinda fused together and warped out of here."
"Pomni," Jax explained, "She came to the Circus the same day you Abstracted."
"It must be nice, having someone care about you enough to deliver you from Hell, huh?"
Jax glanced down and muttered, "Yeah."
"'Cos I remember the last thing you ever said to me: 'have fun bein' crazy'."
"Kaufmo, I--"
"Oh, don't apologise," he chided. "What, you think all you gotta do is say you're sorry, and that makes everything all right?"
"I... I..." Jax sighed, tears welling up in her eyes.
"You did this to me, Jax. You did it to Ribbit, too."
"I know, okay?!" Jax cried, "I know!" She fell to her knees and wept. "I know..."
"Look, Jax, if all you came here to do was cry, you can leave right now. I am not going to feel sorry for you."
"I... I don't want you to be," Jax sniffled, "I just want to know... will it ever stop?"
"What?"
"The... the guilt."
"Guilt? What guilt? You're trying to tell me you feel guilty now? After all that shit you did to me and Ribbit, you suddenly got a guilty conscience?"
"What would you call it, then? Everyday, I wake up in my old room, look at myself in the mirror and see me, I go out and do stuff with Pomni and Ragatha... and I feel so guilty. I can do all this stuff, but you can't. Ribbit can't. Hell, Ribbit doesn't even fucking exist anymore! How do I keep going on, knowing that you two are gone? Why do I deserve to exist?!" She continued sobbing.
Kaufmo said nothing, letting Jax cry a bit more. Eventually, he said, "Honestly? I don't know. That's psychiatrist level stuff. Me, I'm a clown. Well, a clown's ghost, anyway."
"But, yeah," Jax sniffled, "You don't buy that I've got a guilty conscience, huh?"
"Okay," he conceded, "clearly, you do feel guilty. I mean, I'm inclined to say, 'good'.
"You want to know something? The way you kept doubling down on Ribbit telling lies about you, I went and did a little digging. I talked to her and Ragatha. Ribbit was too tired, too broken up to really talk to me, but she told me enough. And, what Ragatha told me just confirmed it. Ribbit loved you. She thought you two had something together, but it only lasted one night. After that, you started pretending like you never said anything at all, and-- do you know how frustrated Ribbit was? That's why I changed around you. Ribbit and Ragatha made it pretty clear that you weren't trustworthy. I don't know what Ribbit said to you that night, but you stopped being our little brother and started being... I dunno... you."
"We talked about this!" Jax gestured to herself, indicating her change in gender preference. "We talked about how I ended up in the Circus, what I did to my mom, and then... Ribbit... puts her bow on my head. And I freeze up. You know, like when you put something onto a cat's head and they just stop everything until you take it off?
"And then you knocked on the door, and I almost shat myself. If you came in and saw me wearing a bow, I just knew something was gonna happen again." She sniffled, "People really treat transfems like shit, you know that?"
"Jax," Kaufmo replied, "I was only gonna, like, ask if you guys wanted to go to the carnival or something."
"That's how I got to the circus in the first place, you know," Jax didn't seem to take notice. "After I came out to my mom, she called me a girly-man and a miserable, rotten tranny. Then she laughed and hugged me for some reason, and I shoved her so hard that she fell... fell down. She just... laid there. I couldn't tell if she was breathing or not. She didn't hit her head as far as I could tell, but... like... I panicked, Kaufmo. I ran away. I ran all the way downtown. I found a mattress that someone threw out next to the dumpster behind Madsen's and I dragged it up to the abandoned apartment above the deli.
I was so afraid, so paranoid about everything. If anyone even said 'hi' to me on the street, I was convinced they were gonna call the cops on me. I couldn't take it anymore, so I went and tried to wash up as best I could, and I went to the mall, just so I could blend into a crowd. There was a demo kiosk at the phone store and I thought, yeah, VR world. My own world sucks a thousand kinds of ass right now, let's take a trip into a different world. So, I sat down, put it on, and..." she sighed, "Yeah."
"Jax, I..."
"No, it's okay. I know what you're gonna say. And I'm not trying to excuse how I behaved, and I'm not trying to ask for your forgiveness. I just wanted you to know why I am the way I am."
"Can I talk now?"
"Knock yourself out."
"You're right, it doesn't excuse your behaviour. But, all the same... if you'd just have told me that..."
"I couldn't risk it, Kaufmo. I couldn't risk that you or Ribbit would be transphobic just like everyone else in the world."
"What about Pomni?" Kaufmo asked.
"What about her?"
"Is she transphobic?"
"No, actually."
"Ragatha? Gangle? Zooble? Kinger? Caine? Are any of them transphobic?"
"No."
"Neither am I, and neither was Ribbit."
"Oh, god..." this revelation just made Jax feel worse. She had pushed her friends away so hard, it drove them to madness and suicide.
"The world is changing, Jax, and not in the way you think. I'd bet that, for every 1 transphobe who gets onto Twitter and writes a thousand thinkpieces about how bad queer people are, there's 10 people who would still love you, even if you were from Mars."
Jax muttered wryly, "I used to know a few alien-fuckers."
Kaufmo chuckled. "You get what I mean. The point is..." he sighed, "I'm glad you finally came out. I hope that, now you're alive again, you can actually make friends and keep them.
"I know you said you didn't want my forgiveness. Well, hey, I grew up going to Sunday school every week. And, I may not believe in God or Jesus anymore, but I still believe in the power of forgiveness and friendship."
"I only wish..." Jax started tearing up again, "that Ribbit was here. I wish she could see how I turned out."
"I do too, Jaxxie. But, you know... you may not have Ribbit anymore. But, you do have Pomni."
"Pomni?"
"She resurrected you from the fucking dead, Jaxxie. She killed and resurrected herself to do it! She loves you, Little Brother, big time.
"Look, you want to stop feeling survivor guilt? You want to honour Ribbit's memory? You go and take that jester girl out someplace, and you show her how grateful you are. Okay?"
Jax wiped away a tear, "Thanks, Kaufmo. I missed you."
"Yeah... I guess I kinda missed you too, Little Brother. Come back and visit me sometimes, huh?"
"You got it!"
Jax stepped away from the memory glass and Kaufmo's Abstract form floated off into the distance.
Suddenly, she heard Pomni's voice from the doorway. "Jax, there you are!"
"Hey, Pomni. You ever been to the Snowy Summit?"
"Gangle and Zooble went there on their honeymoon, but I've never been."
"Didn't I hear Kinger say he built a ski lodge up there?"
"Yeah."
"You wanna check it out?"
"Sure!"