Delirious: 62

Shane stood, threw down the papers she held, and walked a dozen feet around. Not-V gave no reaction, did not so much as raise his eyes from the pile Shane created. She huffed back and stood before the seated figure until he looked up at her.

"Yes?"

"If you are supposed to be Virgil, why don't you sound like him?" The question had begun as the smallest niggling doubt and grew in the back of her mind until she could hardly keep focused on the task of sorting. She appreciated the concept of the work, she just didn't understand what they were accomplish, particularly given that this all seemed to be a vivid dream. She couldn't begin to account for the time they had spent without progress. Anything she could learn, she had to already know, as Not-V insisted upon reminding her.

Not-V squinted as Virgil did when he was confused, the gesture too intimate and familiar to be even slightly welcome. "Excuse me?"

She crossed her arm over her chest and began the argument she had fomented. "If you are supposed to represent my guilt for his death or whatever, if I conjured you up to look like Virgil, why don't you talk like him? Can't my psyche manage a better impression? And could I make you look like someone else? And what do you look like when you aren't looking like someone else?"

He put a photo of Eliot wading in the pond, a Polaroid never taken, back into the pile. "You should really focus on the task."

"And I absolutely will. In a minute. First, I want to know. Can't my subconscious figure out how to make you sound like Virgil and not some robot? It's really driving me a little crazy, because it doesn't make sense. I know what Virgil should sound like." With this, she performed her impression, mussing her hair, slumping her shoulders, and averting her gaze. "I… I… what I mean is that… the… um…" she sniffled into her sleeve "The psychopomp is… uh… necessary in… What I mean is, Roselyn, you've got nice eyes."

"He didn't sound like that. Maybe Woody Allen in high school, but not Virgil," Not-V stated, handing Shane a crime scene photo of Virgil's murder. She dropped it as though it scalded. "I sound how you need me to sound and look how you need me to look. If I don't sound how you wish, it's only because you don't really need me to."

Shane spoke, but did not look at Not-V. She stared at the glossy back of the picture she had dropped. "But why would I want you to sound this way, to look like V, when I am telling you--"

"Why does my appearance matter to you?"

"No fair answering a question with a question," she stated, but continued anyway. "What we look like is how we represent ourselves to the world. You can't judge a book by its cover, but what else do we have at first?"

Not-V squinted again. "Appearance predicates behavior?"

"No... The daemons look like us… like me… they sometimes wear human bodies, but the aren't human."

"Aren't they? Oh." Virgil returned to the piles before them, but looked conspicuously inconspicuous.

Shane grabbed him, pulling him to his feet. "No, not 'oh.' I just figured something out, didn't I? What was it?"

"I wouldn't know, I can't give you any--"

"Don't give me that!"

He stood several feet away from her, where she had pushed him in her zeal at nearly having an answer. He did not smooth his clothes back or take notice of his hair, as his deceased double would have. He merely asked, "Who are you right now?"

"Shane..." she stated, not relishing the punch line. She looked down at her hands that, while thinner and more elegant than she remembered, were distinctly hers. She spun her ankh ring around her finger absently, looking around for a more reflective surface to check the rest of her. She certainly felt like herself, but couldn't find the certainty. There was nothing reflective around them, but she thought she saw a glint up the hill from their field.

"If you are Shane, then who is at Girl's? You can't be in both place, can you?" He walked closer to her, calmly and confidently, and returned to his seat in the warm grass and to the work.

She understood the point of the questions, but felt she could be both a body and a mind without any contradiction. These questions seemed digressive, and did nothing to answer the topic at hand. "Could you look like Eliot. Hypothetically, if I really wished it, could you?"

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