The Love Machine & Other Contraptions by Nir Yaniv Page A

said.
    “You made up Huey, Dewey and Louie. You are the three of them together, or, to be exact, each one of them at any given moment.”
    “That is complete nonsense,” I said. “It’s even stupider than you going on and on about murder, murder, murder.”
    “Really? Do you remember how long you’ve been Huey?”
    “Louie,” I said.
    The demon sighed. “We won’t get far this way. Tell me, can you call Huey and Dewey? Ask them to come here?”
    “Sure,” I said, and they came.
    “Say,” said Huey through a mouthful, “Doesn’t it seem odd to you...”
    “What?” said Dewey.
    “That he, like, disappeared?”
    “Who?”
    “Enough of that!” said the demon, and glared at me. “You’re only helping them, right?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I’m the technical guy.”
    “Very well,” said the demon, and pulled out a gun, and shot Louie and Dewey to death.
    ~
    Smoke, without fire. Silence. Cinders.
    ~
    “What have you done?”
    “Now you don’t have anyone to help.”
    “But we have a lot more things... many more items for... our exhibition. There is still so much to do. Doing is every—”
    “There is no exhibition!” shouted the demon. “Forget it! It’s finished! Gone! Enough!”
    “Remind me—who are you?”
    “I am your viral, artificial conscience,” said the demon. “You can’t get rid of me. I’m a piece of software running on your brain’s wetware, and based on your personality. Just like Huey and Dewey and Louie, R.I.P. But them you made up, and me you haven’t.”
    “I didn’t make anyone up.”
    “Of course you did,” said the demon. “The two—or three—of them are just aspects of your personality. I don’t know what drug or technology you used to create them, but they are definitely you. The loop you’re stuck in is probably some kind of side-effect. Maybe you’re afraid of something and don’t want to move on.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about and I’m not afraid of anything,” I said. “And besides, you said you’re also based on my personality.”
    “But I come from outside,” said the demon.
    “Outside?”
    “Several of those who tried to stop you, in the real world outside of your sick brain, are now in intensive care. The rest have already been buried. Not that there was much left to bury. And that’s why they created me.”
    “Who are you?”
    “I... in one way I am you. They scattered viral spores, encoded and tuned to your brain. You breathed in one of them, and it caused—or created—me.”
    “You came to kill me?”
    “No,” said the demon. “To rehabilitate you. To heal you.”
    “I’m not sick.”
    “Not really,” said the demon. “You’re split. That is, you were split, until I killed Huey and Dewey. Now I hope you can stop. Return to reality. Exit the loop. Stop the burning.”
    “Burn.”
    “Yes.”
    “Burn.”
    ~
    Sparks and cinders. Smoke.
    ~
    “Burn!” I said. “Oh, God! What have they done!”
    “What you did.”
    “ I ... did. I! Me!”
    “Huey and Louie are fiction. They never were. You are the artist who was afraid to be an artist. Maybe that’s why there’s a loop.”
    The exhibition that would never come. Just more and more...
    “I am... I am the artist.”
    “Who was afraid to be an artist.”
    “I am... the artist.”
    Doing is everything ...
    “Forget that. Welcome to reality.”
    “ Reality ,” I said. “What have you got to do with reality?”
    “I could ask you the same question,” said the demon. “But it would lead us nowhere. Tell me—what do you see? Where are we?”
    ~
    Spark and cinder, cinder and spark. Smoke. Darkness.
    ~
    Light. A white room.
    “A white room,” I said.
    “A tabula rasa ,” said the demon. “A blank slate. A good place to start. Now, all that remains for us to do is help you find the way back out.”
    “I am the artist,” I said.
    “You were,” said the demon. “ Were .”
    “Still am,” I said. “Always have been and always will