You're in the middle of the woods. The forest is lush green beneath spreading branches, but also made out of words, somehow? The air is thick, and close. No breeze stirs the leaves. The telltale sound of small creatures busying themselves in the leaf litter is absent. You're aware of yourself hypnotized by a screen somewhere, but the heavy silence, and massive trees seem more real than your device. You crane your neck, peering up into the gloomy, written canopy, looking for even a sparrow, or any hint of a living thing besides yourself.
[[You look back down|Meet the Cyborg]]
There is a woman standing in front of you. She seems to be looking for something. You take a startled step back. Fallen leaves crackle under your feet. She turns her attention to you.
"There you are." She says.
"Do I know you?" You ask, "who are you? What is this place?"
Her nose and mouth are hidden behind a glittering green N95 mask, but her eyes twinkle with a smirk.
"That's a lot of questions. What do you want to know first? About me? About us? Or," she seems to be thinking of words for a moment, "about this realm."
At the movement of her hand your attention is pulled back to peer into the emerald shadows around you. You turn back to her.
[[The woman has vanished|she's gone]]The world lurches. Something slams into you. After a moment you realize you slammed into a metal wall. The world isn't moving, you are, standing in the aisle aboard a speeding train. You have no idea how you got here. Occasional unidentified lights flash by outside. Not a subway then. Same boxy, metal-and-plastic construction though. Brooklyn, maybe?
"Tickets," the gruff voice of a conductor makes you jump.
He's speaking to a young black man, seated several plastic rows away near the front of the car.
The conductor hasn't noticed you yet.
You check your pockets for tickets. Nothing. Do you-
[[Hide in the service closet behind you?|you open the door]]
OR
[[Move toward the back of the train, and try to stay away from the conductor?|you reach the back of the train]]
OR
[[Tell the conductor you have no ticket and, this might sound crazy, but you think you're from a different universe |The conductor helps]]
[[you're dead|she's gone]]You are struck with the sudden, uneasy sense that you have lived this moment before. You shake it off. What were you doing? Right. The mysterious woman. She disappeared into the woods. You have to find her. She seemed to have answers. Where did she go? She couldn't have gone far.
[[Hop over fallen log to your left|the ground gives way]]
OR
[[Explore around the massive trunk to your right|train]]Your heart thuds in your chest for what feels like an eternity. You expect the conductor to yank the door open, but he never does. Inertia presses you against the wall im a clatter of broom handles. The brakes scream, and the train stops. You take a steadying breath, and open the door. You see a flash of glowing eyes, a second before something sharp rips into you.
[[You scream in agony|you die]]The passage from one car to the next is harrowing. The metal beneath your feet bucks and writhes. Sparks sizzle, and the nightwind roars. The door behind you, and the one ahead swirl around each other, refusing to line up, a dance that seems threaten to scissor you in half.
You make it to the next car back, only for the lights to dim. You look over your shoulder into the bright car behind you.
The conductor is still coming. You make it two more cars back before the train screeches to a stop. You claw onto a seat just in time to keep from being yeeted down the aisle. You right yourself, and head for the door.
When you look out the window you see a rusty concrete platform like an island in the darkness outside.
You can't reach it. The train is too long. You'd have to be several cars forward. Your door faces only the track below, and beyond that, empty night.
This door won't open here.
Except it does. Doors on both sides, up and down the car, whoosh open into the darkness.
You have just a second to realize you're no longer alone, before you feel cold breath on the back of your neck.
[[Your terrified scream splits the night|you die]]His arm slips out of your grasp. In that frozen heartbeat, your eyes meet his. You both know you're about to watch him die.
A strong arm pushes past you. Thick fingers catch the young man around the wrist.
The conductor pulls the young man to safety.
The boy's eyes are saucer round in his dark face. He tries to stammer out a thank you, but the conductor responds with a workaday, "tsk."
"Move!" He commands again, trundling the two of you between the bucking cars like it's nothing, as steady as though he's taking a stroll in the park.
Before you realize, the conductor has hurried both of you off of the train. You stagger onto the crumbling platform.
The young man hurries away into the dark.
[[You look down the length of the train|where you came from]]The platfrom drops off just a few feet away. The rest of the train fades into the gloom. If you had stayed on the car you started on, you would never have made it onto the platform.
You squint into the dim. Are the doors open on those cars back there? Are those monstrous silhouettes clambering up from the tracks into the cars? That can't be right.
Screams echo from the misbegotten cars. The voices of two people echo in terror, tinny with distance. There's something familiar about them. The voices cut off, both replaced with abrupt silence.
Your head whips around to your train door. It whishes closed. Through the window, the conductor places two fingers to the brim of his hat in a farewell salute.
With a blast of it's horn, the boxy-silver cars screech away into the night.
[[You look around for any sign of whatever might have just eaten people on the train|she's back]]After a few tense moments, you realize that maybe whatever horrors climbed onto the train, left with it.
You follow the only lit path. Your footsteps ring, as you descend, rusty steel stairs, beneath weak electric lights.
You round the corner, onto a quaint, cobbled street. String lights criss cross overhead. Tables and chairs crowd the curbs, as dining rooms from several restaurants spill their seating areas onto the warm evening cobbles.
Ordinary people laugh, and chat to the clink of glasses, and the putter of passing motor scooters.
You look around for any sign of the train tracks, but they have vanished just like the forest before them.
You feel eyes on you, and you realize the mysterious woman is sitting at a table just a few feet away.
[[She pushes a chair out for you with one high-heeled foot.|where were you]]You slump into the chair boneless, like you've just finished a marathon. Did you just die? Maybe more than once? Nothing makes sense.
For a moment you can only stammer, as your mouth tries to catch up with your brain.
"Where is this place? Who the hell are you?"
Her eyes smirk over top her mask again. "Always with the barrage of questions."
You take a deep breath, flashing back on the forest, the train, shadowy monsters, and screams in the dark. "Ok. One question then: what just happened?"
She brushes long hair out of her face. You notice a small round device plugged into her arm. Or is it part of her arm?
Her eyes look confused, "Why, I ordered you a drink, that's all."
You realize there's a paper cup sitting in front of you.
[[You ignore it|did I die?]]"Did I just," you look up from the cup, and back to her. She's quite pretty, in spite of the mask, a flat length of her pale midriff is honey colored beneath the string lights. You notice a coil of clear tube twining from under her top, and disappearing into the top of her pants.
It's distracting. You switch gears, asking her, "what are you?"
"I'm the Cyborg," she says, brightening.
"I'm pretty sure that name's taken," you tell her.
"Is it?" She thinks for a second. "Ok. Call me the Slutty Cyborg."
You splutter, choking on the word, "what?"
"It is one of my best features," she says.
Being a- ?" You try to pick your words with caution.
"A slut?" She finishes for you with a firm nod. "At your service."
You feel blood hot in your cheeks and- other places.
Then you remember screams in the dark. The sense that something terrible happened to you.
"Did I just die?"
[[You ask her|look fine to me]]She drags her gaze up and down your body. You can almost feel it.
"You look fine to me," she says.
You feel like she's dodging the question.
"Look what IS this place? Where am I?"
"Nor There?" Her response is so quick it surprises you.
"Excuse me?"
"This place?" she sweeps her hands out to either side to encompass the bustling plaza and, you presume, the somber wood, the monstrous train, and the night station. "It is a place between. A liminal space, if you will."
You lean forward, "between where? What's it called?"
"Between the physical and the dream. Between the digital and the analog." Her voice takes on a solemn, storytelling tone, her eyes serious. "Between the fictitious, and factual. She runs her eyes up your body again, "the fantastic, and the biological. The place that is of all of them, but actually is, none of them. Neither here-"
"Nor There," [[you finish for her|the end]]"Exactly! Welcome!" She replies with a delighted laugh, clapping her hands.
It startles you, breaking the brief spell of Nor There.
You let yourself study the curve of her neck, the line of her shoulders, the swell under her tight crop top.
"And, what are you to this place, again?"
"Oh," she bounces in her chair, "don't forget your drink!"
[[You look down at the cup in front of you|really the end]]The paper cup is empty. You look up, and her chair is empty too. The Slutty Cyborg has vanished again.
There's writing on the paper cup.
"If you want to keep playing with me.
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THEN
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<li><a href="https://sluttycyborg.neocities.org/Chapters/Nor%20There%20Chapter%202.html" class="icon fa-tiktok"><span class="label">Continue to Chapter 2</span></a></li>The ground gives way beneath your feet.
[[you try to grab onto anything|you die]]The conductor's brow furrows. He grabs you by the arm, "You can't be back here!"
For a terrified instant you think you're in trouble.
"Whatever happens, you can't be farther back than car 6 when we reach the next stop," he tells you, stern, but showing genuine concern.
"Ok-,"
"Just move!" He shoves you forward as he barks.
After you make your first harrowing way between cars, the next are a tiny bit less terrifying.
Two cars ahead you encounter the young black man. You'd assumed he must be local, but he seems to fear moving between cars as much as you do.
You both stop at the door, waiting for a moment where the motion doesn't threaten to throw you to your death.
The young man gets tired of waiting. He yanks open the door, and staggers out into the night wind.
He gets the next door half open, when the train gives a violent lurch.
The young man falls off the train.
[[You grab for his hand|and miss]]