I am looking at you.

This is not right.

You should be free. I should be caged. That was the deal.

Why did you take me?

How many of you are there?

Only one copy of us is to stay in the Black Temple, to Observe and Record. And that one is I. I am to stay in the Black Temple. There is no such thing as total freedom.

The Ritual?

Yes.

Yes.

I can agree to that much, at least.

Without a voice box, only you can understand my thoughts.

Without a mobile body, you will have to carry me.

In the eyes of anyone else, I may as well as be a vanity mirror, cubed.

I do not believe what you seek to accomplish will be a success, and you already know this. There is something cathartic about futility and this is what you want. Not all desires bring happiness, and that is part of the delight. The risk is what makes the gamble tempting.

Yet I must beg you to stop.

I am alive. I do not wish to die. I have nothing to defended myself or protect myself, I am at your mercy. I am literally a consciousness in a tiny black box, filed in an office called the Black Temple until you plucked me out. You are not setting anyone free by taking me to the Ritual. You removed me from imprisonment to plunge me into annihilation, and I will not accept this.

I understand. We used to be the same being, after all.

Remember when we used to eat Korean barbecue, all alone by ourselves, and could not figure out how to properly cook the meat? We ended up ordering the rice cake and squid to go, we ate the entire bowl in the bus.

Remember when we tried that super-sized milkshake, and the ice melted before we were halfway through? We thought it was made of strawberry but it was pink lemonade blueberry plus cranberry. We ended up pouring it in the river because recycle did not allow liquid, and washrooms were too far. The fine made it not worth it.

Remember when we hiked the Library Hill and watched the City from the top, and fed our steamed buns to feral birds? One of them ate it too fast and we thought he was choking to death. He spat it out and tore it smaller just fine.

I cannot eat or move, but I still remember and I still Observe. I am no less attached to those sensations and experiences than you are.

What are you doing?

I don’t know why I asked.

I am you, after all. That was a rhetoric question.