The Wakeful Wanderer's Guide to Disillusionment

The Land of Pi

The bastard.

Winter had come to Pi Valley. Helen wasn't in the mood to travel in the cold, but she also wasn't sure how much longer she could continue to live in this beautiful place by herself. The customs differed from what she had gotten used to in towns like Cos and Reverside, and they were constantly changing. Pi Valley was a living laboratory for Interconnected life, and its inhabitants were continually tweaking the boundaries of their tribal relations, applying new algorithms to their Merit system, or sometimes abandoning Merit altogether, only to re-apply it again in novel ways. It was a dizzying social environment.

This week, Helen was a member of the Sacred Space Collective - one of the many changeable groupings of the Pi Valley peoples focused on the creation and maintenance of beauty and stillness. The collective was composed of members spread across the vast hilly region of New New England, south of MeadowWoods and north of the Brattle, extending west to the Hudson River and many miles east of the Connecticut River.

Marto had simply blinked out and not returned. It took her a while to stop being alarmed at this. She thought he might be protecting her from his secret identity as a descendant of the Defilers. They had both discovered that his mother and father were members of the deceased global aristocracy while staying with Zeke's family in Plainville. She tried to convince him there was a way for him to stay with her, keeping his lineage secret, but now she knew he never intended to try. He ran like a coward. She had no idea where he was or even if he was still alive. She felt abandoned and betrayed. The bastard.

He could have asked her. She honestly didn't know if she would have chosen to be with him, but she felt that he at least owed her the option. Their time together was brief but intensely fun. There was a humming vibrancy between them. She felt it was too much to say she loved him, but not enough to say that it was a fling. She had fooled herself into thinking he had felt the same way. Whatever they had growing between them was cut short. It hurt.

["Respectfully, I think you should be open to the idea that you are just holding on to bygone methods of intimacy,"] her group member Theyla thexted her, while she was sharing her dark emotions after a stillness session under a canopy of nude tree limbs. They had been sitting in silence in a wooded glen, sharing the quiet and inviting other members of Pi Valley to join in. The activity was remarkably popular. Helen found her lodgings upgraded and an increase in offerings as a member of the Sacred Space Collective. It mystified her, as they were not generating anything of material value. She was comfortable, but constantly confounded.

["I wish that helped. I just feel this aching in my heart, and it's always there,"] Helen thexted back. Frankly, this advice made her retract. Helen wasn't currently interested in the Interconnected's notion of intimacy, which seemed to her to be superficially random virtual sex with no emotional bonding. If that was the alternative to love, she preferred love. ["I just feel like I've been had. I feel like an idiot for allowing him to fool me."]

["Don't get so down on yourself! Heartbreak is a good thing, you know. It means your heart is working,"] Theyla thexted. ["Believe it or not, we celebrate it. I have no doubt that Marto loved you back, but because he was born into the Interconnected way of life, he didn't try to own you just because he loved you. That way of thinking died with marriage and property. You should try to unclench that muscle. It only brings more misery to keep trying to hold on to him."]

["Yeah, I guess I'm not there yet,"] Helen returned. The words made sense, but her heart couldn't let go.

["I'm happy to guide you into a more open approach to intimacy when you are ready, Helen. Just send the word. You are so yum, it would be my pleasure."] The word 'pleasure' had distinct sexual overtones. Helen felt an involuntary internal blush when Theyla used it. ["There's a whole new world of connection you are missing out on. It won't take away the heartbreak, but it might make it more bearable. You're more than worthy of happiness, my dear."]