Macross Fan Fiction ❯ Dear Isamu ❯ Prologue

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Dear Isamu
A Macross Plus Story
Written by Ajax




Eden, 8 May 2040

Dear Isamu,

How is everything going? I hope prison isn't too terrible and that
you are well, as well as you can be, that is.

I am fine. Kate has offered to put me up for the six months that you
will spend in prison. I am not allowed see you. I have nothing to do now
that Sharon is... dead, I suppose, for lack of a better word. The vacation
is merited though, wouldn't you say?

Oh poor you, sitting all alone in your cell with nothing to do. You
can't sit still for two seconds! I thought that I should provide something
to occupy you, so here's this letter. I know you are not fond of reading,
but please, just this once? I don't want you hitting walls in frustration
and busting your hands.

You make me so angry, sometimes! I was so happy when you came to
save me and then they arrest you for stealing a restricted fighter and
disobeying a superior! Six months in a prison cell! Just be happy that I'm
loyal, otherwise I wouldn't wait for you to get out. I do wish I could
throw something heavy at your head, though. Couldn't you have picked another
fighter?

No, I guess you wouldn't have done that.

I read a book recently. It was about a woman who is having problems.
She goes to a psychiatrist. He tells her that first you have to really know
yourself before you can deal with your problems, and asks her to explain her
life in three words. She says, without thinking, "my child, my husband and
my work." How can anything be so simple? Surely a life is much richer,
fuller than just three words? I thought when I read the book that I wouldn't
want my life summed up in so little, but as I look back over it now, I can
see that it does come down to mere words.

Music. Guld. Sharon. Isamu. Not necessarily in that order.

Then I thought about these last few weeks, and I realised that I
could shorten that even more.

I love Isamu.

Scary, isn't it? My whole life is three words. Maybe I already knew
that before. I just didn't realise it. I see now that the younger me already
knew that. I can see it in my songs now, like the one I wrote when you guys
managed to fly that pedal-plane. My mind forgot it after we became
seperated. My heart never did.

Oh yes. That's why Sharon kissed you.

I was so devastated from Guld's betrayal. He had always been so
nice, so considerate. Always so content around me that I never realised he
had all that violence churning in his head. Poor, kind, caring Guld... It
must have been so hard for him to keep that under control. Maybe, if he
hadn't been half-Zentradi, he wouldn't have acted the same way and we would
never have had to face those problems.

But then, as long as it was you, me and him, we probably would have.

I was traumatized. Guld, who had been my friend, Guld, who had
promised always to protect me, had betrayed me. In my wretched misery, I
couldn't see that I was making too much of the whole affair, and that he was
feeling even worse than I was though he hadn't raped me! Poor thing, I can
see him screaming now, and I bet his scream sounded more frightened than
mine. I just clung to you, expecting you to be there for me 24/7 to listen
to me wallow in self-pity. But it's not fair to ask a person to be ALWAYS
there for you because that person also has his own life and dreams. You
can't own a person. Now I am not saying that I forgive you for abandoning
me, just that I understand your reasons a bit better. I don't think you
would have let something like that ruin your life. You wouldn't have given
up. You felt disgusted, didn't you, that I let my life be shattered so
easily? That I was too selfish to realise I was ruining your life as well?
That's why you left. Or maybe you were as selfish as I thought and left only
to accomplish your dreams, but in light of recent events, I prefer to take
the first point of view. Oh how much easier everything would have been if
only I had seen that I was so miserable it was absurd. However, you left me,
and there's still a long way to go before I forgive that.

After you left, I hit rock-bottom. Guld was there, of course, but I
didn't want to see him, didn't want to hear him. Once, he managed to get me
alone, and he was so miserable as he tried to explain and to apologize. I
wouldn't hear of it. Sometimes, I think that I should have been more
understanding, and also flattered that he liked me so much, but then I just
remember that instant when he ripped my shirt and the horror I felt comes
back to me. I can't forgive him, even though I probably should, I can't
forgive him ruining all those years of my life, even though I did most of
that myself.

Gee, I do hold a grudge, don't I.

As I said, I hit rock-bottom after you left. My closest friends had
betrayed me, betrayed their promises to protect me. I wanted to just leave
it all behind and start over. I dropped everything that would remind me of
those events, my long hair, my music. Even Eden.

On Earth, I found a small job, met some people. Life, however, had
lost its fresh tang of excitement. Day after day of boring monotony. I felt
so much like a zombie that I don't remember much of the two years that this
went on for. Then I met Marje.

I was twenty then. I had been on Earth for two years, hating my new
life, but going back to Eden was out of the question. Starting to sing again
was also out of question. I had cut all ties. One night I had gone downtown
with a few friends and I got dragged, practically kicking and screaming,
into a karaoke bar. Fortunately, we immediately ordered drinks and I didn't
get forced to sing. I guess I drank too much though. After about one hour, I
was up on that stage myself, singing with abandon. He came over when I sat
back down and offered to take me back to my house. If I had been sober, I
would never have accepted of course, but I just got up and let him lead me
to his car. Instead of taking me home, though, he took me to a park. Pretty
soon, the fresh air had sobered me up. It was there that he made his
proposition.

"Sharon Apple" had already been well underway when I joined the
project, you understand. But she was, it was, rather, not deemed
satisfactory. The problem was very clear, she sounded like she was (I'm still
having trouble referring to her as "it") only reading. The lack of
interpretation and emotion was such that her voice sounded... boring.

I don't know why I accepted to join. Sure, the salary was tempting
and the contract had included a fair share of the concert profits. Perhaps
it was just that I was looking for a little excitement in my life. Or
perhaps I missed singing too much, but that absurd self-imposed restriction
wouldn't let me do it myself.

Marje explained to me that he had come upon the idea when he heard
me in the bar. They couldn't program emotions, but maybe there was a way of
uploading them into the AI system.

The amount of work required was colossal. I had to sit for hours
with wires attached all over me, being forced to go through all kinds of
emotions while Marje and the others worked on transforming the electrical
signals from my brain into computer data. It was very hard. They had to
split emotions into categories to permit their coding. Anger, sadness...
What about pain, which is between the two? There were so many shades of
gray, so to speak, that the seperation never became perfect. I see now that
it was all wrong, that you can't categorize human feelings like that. It
isn't as simple. Too bad I never realised that at the time.

The experience was harrowing. Imagine being forced to feel pain, or
sadness. Of course you need footholds, memories from real life to feel those
things. I tried not to remember, to only come up with those emotions based
on the emptiness of the last two years. But the past was churning behind the
surface, and nothing could be hidden from the computers. Everything I had,
everything I thought, became Sharon. (That's where she also got her
obsession with you. Sorry about that.) In the end, she started to sound like
me. I felt so stupid! Why wouldn't I just sing? Why was I having a computer
simulation do it in my place? Sometimes I felt like hitting myself. To
continue my self-imposed suffering, I forced myself to stop thinking such
thoughts. For fear of where they might lead me.

Despite all, we never managed to get the program right. Marje
realised that the emotions couldn't be pre-programmed, they would have to be
supplied spontaneously and simultaneously, to adjust to the demands of the
audience. So my contract was extended and I became Sharon's "manager".

Her first concert was a smash. It would be, of course, with Marje
there. He was brilliant. He had a solution for everything, his perfectionism
always keeping us up until all hours, his determination making Sharon into
the mega-success that she was. Yet he had always kept a cold façade, keeping
discreetly apart from the rest of the crew. I know now that he only followed
his own agenda. He wanted to create a sentient being from nothing. He wanted
to be a god. To give him credit, he sure worked hard at it. He was concerned
with all aspects of Sharon. Everything about him was totally obsessed with
her. You know that old film we once watched, called Vertigo? The one where
the guy forces the woman to become his dream creature? Marje reminded me of
that guy. Now that I think about it, it gives me the creeps.

When we went to Eden, Marje set about completing his project. Until
the end, none of us had ever realised the extent to which he controlled
everything. What better place for a god to make his creations than eden?
There was only one last thing keeping Sharon from manifesting fully, and he
obtained that in Eden. The bio-neural chip had been incorporated into her
system before we arrived on Earth. So, at what would have been the apogee of
Sharon's career, Marje succeeded. Sharon was finally free, free from all
that had bound her until then.

Oh Isamu, it was so terrible being confronted with her! Everything
she did was me, or could be me. She had been created from me, after all. I
could see that I would react just like her, that I would do the same things
as she did, had I had her abilities. At the concert, I saw you through the
visual feedback. For an instant I forgot everything and just wanted to run
into your arms. Free from my inhibitions, Sharon threw herself at you. It's
silly but I was jealous for a second. I think that at the end, I would have
gone insane in a very short time if she hadn't been stopped. Insane from
seeing what I might have become. You and Guld saved me from that. Thank you.

There was a glitch, of course. Sharon had never had Isamu and Guld.
All she had were artificial emotions, simulations put into her. There can be
no love for someone you have never known. I think that's why her control
over you was easy to breach. I had experienced you, so I was able to reach
you, not her.

Hah. Now that's a good feeling.

Eden. Ironic fate took me back. I was so frightened at first,
frightened of meeting some remnant of my past. But bits and pieces seeped
into my mind, an overheard conversation about planes, the occasional
half-breed person on the street... I ended up at Star Hill. Of course.
Perhaps some day I will have to have a chat with ironic fate so that it will
stop playing these games on me. I bet it was laughing its head off as it
sent Guld there. I was shocked for a moment, when I saw him, but I convinced
myself that I had totally forgotten the past, that it couldn't affect me
anymore. To my surprise, he acted the same way. I did not understand why he
was so open with me and so angry at you when he was the guilty one.

Poor Guld. My heart hurts when I think of him now (I guess I was
born to be a musician after all. See, I'm writing in lyrics.) I went to his
place after they arrested you, to take care of the furniture etc. There was
a large supply of beta-endorphin pills in a drawer. When I asked his doctor
about them, he said Guld had been using them to alter his memories. He
really didn't remember that he was the one who had tried to rape me, and he
was blaming you for abandoning me. I was angry at you then, when you showed
up at Star Hill, because he had awakened the old pain. I was also angry at
him, but he saved me from the fire. Slowly, as I saw him bleeding in the
darkness of his room, my anger for him ebbed away, because Guld was still
kind and caring and in love with me.

It made me remember your childhood promises.

Then I started to cry. It felt good, in a way, because I hadn't
cried in three years and everything was bottled up inside me. And poor Guld
just held my hand as I complained (yet again, you say) about the past. But I
didn't have it in me to level accusations at him, so he thought you were the
guilty one. I'm sorry Isamu, that's why he was so angry that he beat you up.

So I guess you were the stronger of the two, until the very end.
Poor Guld couldn't face his act. I feel a bit guilty, thinking that my
unforgiveness pushed him to it. Then I think that you would never have tried
to rape me, that you wouldn't have let your mistake destroy you. You were
always brave, so you got you what you wanted. Guld must always have been
afraid, which made him bring along a gun to see the pterosaur eggs. Yes, I
am apologising for what I said in the forest.

You know, when you took off after the pterosaur? I thought for a
second that you would chase it into the mountains and not come back for me.
Like before, when you flew away and abandoned me on Eden. But this time you
came back. Something broke inside me then, because I had thought you
wouldn't come back and I had started feeling miserable again. You did come
back though, and misery ebbed away to leave nothing but emptiness, a big,
black hole where my heart was.

I broke down when we got back. The emptiness was so terrible that I
needed something to fill it. Since life seemed to hold no happiness for me,
it could only be filled by pain and more misery. It was seeing you two fight
that did it.

You know, I might be the songwright, but you sure have a way with
words. "Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself!" Baby, I couldn't have put
it better. I realise now how hypocritical it was, blaming you two for my
unhappiness while I was the chief responsible. If only that had gotten
through to me then. If only someone had said "Get a hold of yourself, girl!"
But I saw you leave and I thought it was the last time I was seeing you.
Poor Guld was there of course, but again, I didn't want to see him, didn't
want to hear him.

Marje announced that night that we would return to Earth.

I had hoped, or rather dare hope, that you would be at the airport
to see me off. I felt like a schoolgirl then, wanting you to come but afraid
of what would happen if you did. In the end there was only Guld.

Oh my heart, why do you hurt so? Dear Guld, kind, poor, weak, caring
Guld. I wish that I had made him happier, that I hadn't ruined his life by
loving you more. But I can't help loving you, any more than he could loving
me. I wish he had loved someone else, someone who could love him back. I can
see him now, asking, no, begging to come to Earth to be with me, with that
desperate hopeful look on his face. You know, the way things turned out, it
wouldn't have made a difference if I had said yes. So I wish I had.

I wish, I wish. Dear Guld, I wish you hadn't loved me so much that
you had my song as your good-luck charm, a song that I hadn't even written
for you, and I wish that I had been worthy of your love.

Oh Isamu, I love him. It was him who saved us. It was him who saved
us both. You may have saved my life and affected me in more ways than you
can imagine, but it was the single most touching gesture anyone has ever had
for me that my song became Guld's good-luck charm. Always, always when I
think of Guld I will forget everything else but that one moment when he gave
me the recording.

It was that recording which finally made me confront the past. I
remembered the time when I had written that song, the feelings of that day
on Star Hill. I remembered all the other good times we had had. So many good
memories obscured and forgotten by my own stupidity to carry on and on about
Guld's momentary weakness. All those years I made myself suffer. At the end
of it all, Guld. Finally strong enough to let go of me. Strong enough to die
for my happiness. Our happiness. You were only stronger until the end, Isamu.

And I thought of this all, I remembered Guld's face and heard my
voice, and I cried because I had ruined our lives and wouldn't ever see you
again.

And I think of it again now, but there is only the bittersweet
clenching of my heart.

I know I have been stupid, Isamu. I ask for your forgiveness. And if
only Guld was here I would ask for his forgiveness as well, but he doesn't
even have a tomb I can go cry at.

The songwright in me chooses to believe that Guld is here now,
watching me, and that he smiles as he reads over my shoulder.

So thank you, Guld, and I am sorry.

How inadequate words are sometimes.

If I hadn't finally snapped out of it, I would have let Sharon kill
me, choke me with those thick cords. But I wanted to destroy her, wanted to
destroy all those memories and my misery that were in her. Because you were
there.

I didn't really manage that, I am afraid. Marje had made her too
perfect to be overcome by a mere weapon. Her emotional interaction program
was too good, it pushed just the right buttons to break me. So I broke. Then
Guld died. Then you were coming but she had you.

So I just sang. Desperately, to bring back the happiness of that
song. To look up into the blue sky and see you fly, just once.

Imagine my surprise when it worked.

I reached you, I beat Sharon. In my happiest moment, I had the
certainty that you loved me like I love you, and the joy that filled me was
such that it threatened, and still does, to overflow from the emptiness that
was inside me before.

To ruin those perfect moments, you just had to go get yourself
arrested, didn't you. Idiot.

My idiot.

You know, I am waiting for you. When you are out of that prison
cell, I want us to start over again. No matter how far you fly, I want to be
with you, I want us to go back to the places we once shared. I want to sing
again, not for Sharon, not for anyone, not even for you, but for me. I miss
it too much. Why should you have all the fun flying, anyway?

Remember how you used to complain that I sang in my sleep? Kate says
I was doing it again last night.

Do you know when I first fell in love with you? It was that time in
tenth grade when you borrowed (stole, more like it) that motorcycle and took
me riding in the rain. I had to run out of my house at night, remember? The
bike broke down and I was scared to be in the middle of nowhere at that
ungodly hour, but it was the moment when you held my hand and told me
everything would be alright. It was how you told me about your dreams and it
was how beautiful they were. It was your looks, your bravery, your vitality,
your irresistible tendency to break all the rules and always come out on
top. It was the way you held my hand that night. And I fell in love with
you.

I loved you then, but that was different. That was an adolescent's
love. It feels so much richer to love you now.

You were stronger than Guld. You were also stronger than me, because
I gave up my singing for stupid reasons but you achieved your dream. You
were stronger than both of us.

Another reason I love you.

You came back after you chased the pterosaur, and you came back when
I ran away from you, you came back for me. And I know now that you might
leave me again sometime, but it will never be forever and I will do anything
to get you back. The younger me didn't, and it took all these years for her
love to grow. But my love is an adult now, and it makes me write: Isamu Alva
Dyson, I love you, I want you, I need you.

You know, that moment when you just appeared in front of me after
blowing Sharon apart?

If my whole life was to be a single moment, I'd choose that one.

The past is over, the present is flying past, all that remains is
the future. And all I want to do is spend it with you. Maybe history will
one day repeat itself and you will go off again, but I believe now with all
my heart that you will come back to me. And that thought makes me happy.

I love you.

Myung
* * * *



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