Ones and zeros

Dear The Other Megumi,

You’d think I’d know you better by now.  You’d think I’d understand the confusion you’re in.  Left all alone.  Stranded, abandoned in a world not your own.  Not of your own making.  Something you understand but are not a part of.  You just appeared there--a blip in the screen--and there you are.  A bunch of ones and zeros like all the other ones and zeros I adore.  I want to say I’m sorry, for using you, putting you through the same paces.  I use you because you are everything and nothing I am not--

I just want you to know I am sorry.  You are meant for all sorts of things, anything you want to be you can be.  I can make it happen.  And by making it happen, I can be all sorts of things, anything and whatever I want.  See? I use you to be a better me, and by using you to be the Better Me, Me in reality falls through.  I look in a mirror and see phantom faces or people and things I’ve never met.  Those are things you met.  Because I made you meet them, talk to them, spend time with them.  And while you were happy, I was happy.  When you are sad, I am sad.  When you are broken, I am righteously angry and then--

Just ones and zeros.  What have I done?  I have ruined you? I have ruined me.  Did I ruin us?  I don’t think so.  We’re intrinsically bound, you and I, going round and round, back in forth in a demented catch game of what’s real?

Follow up questions: what are emotions? How do they work? Why do I feel so strongly for something so clearly fake.

Is it the inevitable fate, for us, to go boldly forward.  Blind and entwined in some faux proxy meaning of destiny.  Will I ever take my head out of the jackass hole I put me in.  Put me in put you in.  Because if I can’t get out, you can’t get out.  If we can’t get out we’re a failure, and I can’t do that to you, but you’re just--

Ones and zeros.

I am so sorry.

I won’t be stopping anytime soon.  Bear with me.  We can get through it together, right?

--The Megumi On This Side of Fiction