“She really tried to fuck things up, y’know?” Sam said, cracking the neck and then stretching the body while she sat. “How the fuck did she get that far?”
“I don’t know.” David said. He furrowed his brow for a moment, obviously deep in thought. “I wish I knew how she managed to get through the Collective’s defences. You have always been so good in the past at stepping in to stop it.”
“But this time she was close, real close. Popping out the fucking pills, y’know? Shit, that is much further along than she has managed in years.”
“It is a serious concern, I know. I was always able to take confidence from the Collective, knowing you would be able to stop any serious attempts on the life, yet this has shaken my confidence, if I’m honest.”
“Your confidence? What about us? If we don’t know how she slipped through the defences, then how do we stop her trying it again? And what if she succeeds? Fuck!”
“Well, don’t forget she didn’t succeed. Although it was closer than any of us would have liked, someone did step in and stop it. There is no reason to think you wouldn’t be able to do it again. But I would like it if you could all have a talk about it and see if we can come up with a strategy, maybe work out how this happened. Putting aside the risk Jo placed you in, I also don’t like the fact she is in that much pain again.”
“Yeh well, we all have pain doc, but we don’t try and destroy the body every time we feel like shit.”
David could have reminded her that there were, indeed members of the Collective who did just that, but he decided not to say anything.
“I want to help Jo, but I rarely see her and when I do it is for such a short time…”
“I’m not sure I understand your interest in her.” Sam said, looking at him, her eyes narrowing slightly.
David met her gaze and, having had this conversation so often with Sam, he knew what was coming when he said “Well of course I have an interest in her. She is part of the Collective.”
“You know damn well she is not part of the Collective.”
“And you know I disagree with that. I believe she is part of the Collective.”
“Fuck doc, how many times do we have to tell you? She is not one of us, she is not in the Collective. She is merely the host, the owner of this fucking body that we all use. She’s not even a whole person, so how could she be one of us? She’s just a fucking shell.”
David remained silent, as this was a common bone of contention between the Collective and himself. They truly believed Jo was not one of them and that she did not have the capacity to be any more than the shell they perceived her to be. He could only imagine how much this would hurt Jo if she realised that was how she was thought of. Or did she already know?
David looked at Sam and said, “Does Jo know you all think that? That she is only a shell and isn’t part of the Collective?”
Sam snorted, “How the fuck would I know what that stupid bitch knows? More to the point, why the fuck would I care? Besides she doesn’t believe we exist, so it doesn’t really matter to her what we think, does it?”
David sighed, realising he wasn’t going to make any headway with that line of questioning today. Besides, the issue of Jo’s attempt was much more pressing at this point in time.
“Putting that aside, I am unsure what to suggest. Where do we go from here?” he asked Sam.
“How the fuck do I know?” she countered, as she crossed the arms and leant back in the chair, closing down the discussion before anything was resolved.
Linda
It was the next session when Linda was with David. After talking about what Linda had been doing with her time, Linda decided to get to the heart of the matter. Taking a deep breath, she said “We still don’t know exactly what happened. How Jo managed to get that close to trying to end the life.”
Sitting forward, David asked, “What do you know?”
“All we know is she made the decision, and she got as far as popping out the pills. We didn’t know anything about it until we saw Demise and Trudi running down the hall within. Then we knew something was wrong and found out they intervened just in time.”
“And nobody has been able to explain how? I know you have things in place to stop that, due to the high risk of self-injury and suicide held within the Collective.”
“Well, all we can think is it is somehow related to the level of noise from within.”
“What noise do you mean?”
Linda thought for a moment, then said “We have the crying within again. Constant sobbing echoing around the house within. And generally the noise level has increased, too.”
“I didn’t realise the crying had started again,” David had previously heard about the crying which seemed to happen from time to time. “And you feel that could have something to do with not being able to intervene earlier?”
Linda nodded, “The increase in noise means it is harder to focus out here, or see what is happening out here when we are within. But,” she added, “it is really just a guess.”
“How is Jo now, do you know?”
“I’m not sure, I haven’t heard anything about her.”
That was disappointing, and he said “It might be good if you could find out how she is doing. I spoke to her the other day, but it was so brief and we didn’t get the time to touch on how she was feeling.” David wished Jo could stay longer when she was in session with him, as he knew she was in a great deal of emotional pain. Yet she rarely stayed for more than a few minutes.
David said “You know I have been thinking. I wonder if you did try and involve Jo a little more and find out more about her, maybe you would be able to find out why or how this happened. And it may even lessen the chance of it happening again.”
Linda’s first instinct was to say ‘absolutely not’. After all, Jo wasn’t part of the Collective, so how would involving her benefit them?
But over the next couple of days, she started to think a little more about what he had said. Until they understood how Jo got through the defences, then how could they stop her? Could David be right? He knew the Collective so well and he often was able to shed light on things they themselves could not see or understand. So if he was mentioning it, then Linda was inclined to believe he may be onto something. And as much as she didn’t want to include Jo in anything, she couldn’t deny that on some level what David said made sense.
Jordan
Jordan was aimlessly wandering around the house, not sure what to do. The Collective was in a state of upheaval, due to Jo trying to screw everything up. Her desire to die was nothing new, and they had always managed to protect the body by pulling her back inside if the suicidal impulses seemed to be building when she was out front. Yet this time she had slipped through, and nobody understood how she had done it. And if they didn’t understand how, how could they stop it happening again?
Jordan wasn’t an idiot, she knew Jo had to be stopped. I mean, if it was a simple matter that Jo would simply kill herself, then she wouldn’t care. But if Jo succeeded, then she would kill the body, and how could they all exist without it? It was a scary thought, that she could succeed and they would no longer exist. Jordan was supposed to help protect the Collective against any threats, but how could she protect against Jo if she didn’t even know it was happening? It wasn’t fair that Jo had that sort of control over them all. It wasn’t fair at all!
Jo
Jo found herself in the front of the TV, with a foreign subtitled movie playing. It took a few moments for her to get her bearings. Last thing she remembered