Lawrence was at a dead end, the desire for movement, for pursuit was very slowly waning. He could not even quite remember the initial spark which had goaded him into hunting America in the first place, it had been some time since he'd had her alone for long enough to feel it, to warm his hands - or hand - by the blazing warmth of her emotions. He was forgetting what was even so special about it in the first place. She had surrounded herself with bland predictable suitors, vying with one another for her attention and he could already feel her settling for what she had. It made him feel numb, it made him slant off into that place where inertia was simpler than action, where cessation was a calm place where he could simply immerse himself in sensory deprivation.
He'd started repeating gestures again, but it did not concern him. Because even concern would be a blip on the horizon, a pulse on the flatline he'd been feeling lately. People had gone on some world altering mission and he had not cared. He would not have cared if they had simply gone for groceries either.
Jan did not have the traction or anonymity he'd once possessed on this island, he was ill suited and inefficient as personas went. But the missing hand presented a hitherto unexperienced limitation on the formation of new and more suited personas. He'd cut himself into a corner and though he did not regret the choices that he had made based upon logic and reason at the time, it was undeniably inconvenient. America's influence, which had remarkable reach had turned a substantial number of the island's residents against him, even individuals that he had never met in the flesh. It was interesting, but also an inconvenience. Even the problem of the boy was unresolvable. It was not straightforward to kill hunters, it would be a long game, if he did not get himself killed which he ultimately would, nothing that stupid could exist for long alone.
There were no simple routes forward, his artifact presented only a slim window of time within which to interact, it was no long term solution. There were no long term solutions.
And rather than tell him to be quiet the way he often did, Lawrence let the creature sob and whine, he let him howl out his solitude and grief because somewhere in suffering there was a faint spark of satisfaction, just like when he'd exactly cut the paw off of that squirming protesting minipet, even when he'd watched from somewhere far away as his own body protested and shut down as he sawed off his hand. But suffering alone would never be enough, physical suffering could not be sustained, it did not intensify over time, it numbed and dulled as the mind coped, it would never build into a crescendo of awakening. It was a stopgap and a waste of time.
<
<...we could get ye a frizbee. They ur really cool, they made me happy. Frizbee. Or weeds. Weeds all green and happy.>
<> he said. <>
The canine wilted.
<
He stopped listening, bored with the weapons melodramatic noise. Instead he went back to what he'd been doing, writing the same sentence out, meticulously down to the same loop, over and over in a notebook. He no longer needed the lights on to do it, it came second nature. He had to keep his dexterity up, he had to keep doing something lest - like using another voice too long - he forgot how to move at all.
