"Because of me?" said Sean.

I thought about it. "Not really. You're involved, but there are other reasons, lots of them." Young people, gathered around a campfire, roasting strange carcasses…

"I don't want violence done in my name," he said. He was still in there, nonexistent, invisible, undetectable. His sadness was no longer his dominant personality trait, which was nice; he could get through sentences without sobbing. "You've helped me. I don't want you hurt. Concurrently: I don't want to be the way I was."

I still didn't like him, but I also felt sorry for him. Complicated. "How have we helped you? We keep you in a jail in the attic."

"At my request. Without this circle keeping me focused I'd be in hell."

Ghost Sean was dramatic. "Do you remember being here before the circle?"

"It was like a dream. If time passed I couldn't tell. Running. Calling. Empty halls. No response." A buzzing sigh. "When I could think, I imagined I was being punished for distressing things I remembered doing." Then an abrupt change of subject; it happened with him. "The people who built this place, what did they look like?"

"Big elk people. The Library has these things in them, chemical images kind of like early photographs with a scent element. There are pictures of them in there. They didn't have eyesight."

"Blind elk," he mused. "Did they walk around on their hind legs?"

"No, Sean. Quadrupeds, herbivores, antlers. Elk."

"Why make photographs if they were blind? Why build an observatory if they were blind?"

"Because it's cool," I said, getting a little exasperated. Sean was getting less scatterbrained as time went on, but I did get tired of explaining the obvious to him.

My neck had started hurting, a dull throb that wouldn't go away. And my left thigh, for some reason. It made me cranky. "They were cool people who did cool things," I said.

"Are you upset with me?"

"Of course not, but I'd like to focus." Because Sean would just blip out sometimes without warning and be unresponsive for hours; I felt like I had a time limit here. "Why does your dad want you back so badly? He has his son over there, the meat version. Family togetherness preserved."

"He needs money. He needs it more than anything."

"Why?"

"What do you mean why? It's money!"

"He lives on an island on another planet, Sean. What would he spend it on? His camp is a dump; maybe that?" I frowned. "And who would give him money? Space-x? Nasa?"

"Rich guys, I always assumed. And he doesn't care about that camp or the people living there. There was one time when the campers crashed out and started burning things down. He was nervous they'd get to the pipe." Here his voice sounded horribly like that of his father: "Protect the pipe, Sean! And when they got too close, he ignited them. That's the only time I remember him caring."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Stories with me in them as a character tend to get my attention. "Tell me about the pipe."

"It's…it's the thing he gets things from." Sean's dreaminess was giving way to uncertainty. "He has a printer. He prints the tent stuff from it, the white plastic things. I think he made inflatable boats with it once…" He trailed off. "I don't think I'm supposed to remember this."

"What would stop you?"

"I don't think that I'm the me that was there." He paused. "I think you were there. You were …"

His voice sneered into the Sean I'd met in the camp. Commanding, arrogant, petulant. Manly. "You were chickenshit. Wouldn't come out and fight, you know? Just burned things and ran, then you'd hit us from behind, bam, and just vanish into the trees like a ghost, wouldn't face us like a damn man, Owen. What's up with that shit, dude?"

"Bad day for everybody. What else do you remember?"

"You hurt me!" he said, betrayal and shock in his voice. "I challenged you to a fight and you...you cheated!"

Greg, bleeding in the dirt, screaming that I'd cheated, cheated…"Sounds like something I'd do."

"Dad didn't want to ignite. He said it was too costly at this stage, you had all these other people, all upset over nothing. Over a fat girl!"

"Over nothing," I said. Evenly. So calm.

"Taylor died, Owen! Was it you?"

"Possibly."

"Electrocuted! He ran into a trap, one I bet you'd built, and he was trying to catch you and the transformer blew and the power went out and he was smoking and all because of her, because of Mandy–"

He stopped like he'd pulled his own plug. I listened for more, called to him.

His dejected voice: "Don't do that to me again, please. I became him again. Me again. Like putting on a pair of old shoes. It was…comfortable." He sounded disgusted.

"Sean…I want to see what we can learn from you. You spent a lot of time in that camp, one way or another."

"The camp! Those weren't people. Just a bunch of animals. Myself included. Myself in particular." Disgust, thick and contemptuous.

"Are you better now? Better than you were then?"

"I can think. First time in my life, I can see where the trouble was. I was an animal that thought it was a person. Talking meat." Usually Sean the Ghost was dreamy, mellow. Now he dripped venom.

"What would you say to that version of yourself, if you could talk to him?"

He got louder, angrier, shouting at his past self. "Get off your ass and try to help! It's not all about you! Why does everyone around you have to be afraid?"

He wound down, became morose again. "You…you're very tricky, Owen."

"How so?"

"Because now I have to be better. I have to help."

"Oops."

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