Twelve years. It goes slow until it goes fast. And then it’s gone, like it never happened. You’ve been a good friend, Kilgore. A confidant. I sometimes question why I’m making these tapes, though. I’ve never listened to them, and if people found them, then feelings would get hurt. Which was never my intention.
My intention was to leave evidence, a document of my time here. Because I’ve decided to go back to the Solid World. If the Solid World can convince me to stay there, then I’ll stay there, and these tapes will be history, an account of how things turned out. For someone to find, somewhere down the line.
Things haven’t turned out as great as I might have hoped, but they’ve happened naturally. Most of them, at least. Part of me can be thankful for that. I’ve created a place where people live, love, and scream at one another sometimes. It’s not all about me anymore.
As for them, a few deserve better. The ones like Derek and Maria, who decided that they didn’t want to live in this Thessaly, for instance. I guess I gave them a nice place to live, but they still deserve better. My parents. They deserve better too. I never understood them, but maybe that’s because I never wanted to.
Most of all, Alistair deserves better. I’ve been given certain powers, and for so long I used them for selfish things. There has to be a bigger reason for my abilities. If there’s something I can do to ease someone’s suffering, I should do it. Forget the silly rules I made for myself about not meddling with their lives.
So when I come back from the Solid World, if I come back, I’m going to turn Alistair into someone else. I know the easy thing would be to get rid of him, to box him away like my brother and sister and the others who wanted to get out. But that would be too painful. What I should do is change him, just enough so that I don’t mean anything to him anymore, so that he cares about someone else. Enough that he’ll still have a life, but he won’t remind me of the original Alistair.
All the other originals are important too, but the original Alistair means so much more than he realizes. Not because I love him. Because I could have loved him, if I had chosen a different path. If I had opted not to spend my entire childhood here. If I had decided the Solid World was the world worth giving myself to. If. If. If.
It wouldn’t feel right to be with the original now, not after all the life I’ve lived. Maybe someday I can tell him that and he’ll understand. Maybe not. For now, I’m going to bury these tapes in the only place they should be buried. The tapes will tell the story of my mistakes.
Then I’ll be going to the Solid World, to give it one last try. Maybe I’ll come back to Aquavania soon. I kinda think I have to come back. I don’t know if I understand how to live in the Solid World anymore.