There's a place in the tank where your mind is truly free to wander. A place where you're conscious enough to hold some version of a thought, but sedated and stagnant enough that you aren't bound to logical, conscious patterns. It's brief, but it occurs every time you're in the tank, right before waking. You ride the crest of a wave of awareness, and sometimes you think something interesting.

This time, you realize you don't know your name.

There's no major emotional response to that, other than a bit of wonderment. That's significant, isn't it? Losing something so integral and personal. You can't remember the last time you thought of yourself by name. More than that, you can't remember the last time Julia said it.

Is it possible that she's forgotten it, too?

If you don't know it, and Julia doesn't know it, what does that mean? She's the only one who knows you still exist - to the extent that you do exist, here in the playroom, jettisoned from the real world. If neither of you know your name, do you have one? Are you anyone?

You stomach flutters, loose and hot, like flapping wings or leaves rustling before a storm. It's a pleasant feeling, bright and resonant deep inside of you. You've managed to forget something indescribably crucial, and that somehow feels like an achievement. Like you accomplished something you've worked at for years. Dedicated your self to, if you still have a self.

You linger in that moment, liminal both in space and time, and now in self. You're nowhere, it's no moment, and you're no one. 

Eventually, the haze splits, and you emerge into a fuller consciousness. You press the door release and step out of the tank. Immediately, you see Julia sitting on the floor, your clone sitting next across from her. They're holding hands. Julia's face holds the warmth and ecstasy that you've seen so many times. The clone's posture is strange, in a way you can't define. Kind of stiff and rigid on one side. Julia's wearing gloves, you notice. Light blue disposable medical gloves. There's a syringe on the ground next to her, empty. 

"Hi, baby," she says to you, and she pats the floor next to her with a palm. "Come here and join us." You nod, getting down onto the floor. Your knee bumps against your clone's, and they don't react right away. Julia's focus is on them, and as she watches, it groans. You can see the clone's neck muscles working, straining. 

"Does it hurt?" she asks. The clone nods. It's not a good nod. It's a rictus movement, rigid and taut. What breaths you can hear it taking are thin, dry gasps. When Julia releases its hand, the arm drops unceremoniously to its side like dead weight. She puts one nail on the clone's shoulder, digging in. Not quite enough to break the skin, but dragging down and across their chest. The skin reacts, tracing a perfect pink line. "Can you feel that?" she asks, and the clone doesn't move. It coughs out a noise that could possibly be a 'no'. Julia watches the welling pink skin. You watch Julia.

She reaches out for you, not looking. She wraps a hand around the back of your neck and tugs you down. Your heartbeat accelerates - she's letting you help. Letting you be useful. She guides you to exactly where you want to go anyway, her cock pressing into your mouth. Divinity. Perfection.

She leads you through the motions, her hand pressing and pulling in rhythm, showing you exactly how deep to take her, how long to linger, how fast to rise and fall. It's exquisite, being guided by Julia, but it's barely necessary. You know every facet of her preferences. You are a machine perfectly tuned to her pleasure. You are an apex organism, honed by evolution over hundreds of generations, genetically ideal to know and provide everything Julia needs.

"That's perfect, sweetheart," Julia breathes, and your whole body sings with pride, although you know she probably doesn't mean you. "You're perfect," she gasps. You know she's not talking to you. You can never be perfect for Julia, because you're alive. Perfection is destruction, annihilation. Erasure. 

You are a flawed thing, a remnant, the leavings after Julia's experience of divine transmission. Still - unholy and crude or not, she's cumming in your mouth, and that's a powerful consolation.

When she finishes, she has you dispose of the clone, and then she's languid and thoughtful. She doesn't rush you back to the tank. She keeps you nearby, lying beside her. She traces a finger up and down your side, contemplative.

After ten heavenly minutes of that, she speaks. 

"I've got another, you know. Another syringe. Another dose."

You blink, shifting to adjust your position, looking up at her face.

"There's barely anything left of you, is there? You hardly even speak anymore. You don't remember much, I can tell. Are you still in there?"

You could answer if you wanted. You still have language, reasoning, intelligence. It's organized around an absolute throughline of Julia, yes, of course. But it's still there. You don't speak, though. You know that what Julia needs right now is to follow this thought to its end, whatever that might mean. You can't add anything by speaking. So you stay quiet and let her angelic voice sail through the room.

"I think a lot about Michelangelo lately. You know, the thing about the David? I don't know if it's a real quote or not, but they say he said 'I chip away the stone that isn't David'." She touches your nose with a delicate fingertip, then your lips. "So what would it mean to chip away the stone that is David?"

Those names should mean something to you, you're sure, but the person who knew them was carved away by the tank ages ago. You're less and less and less of a thing, and that's wonderful. Isn't it? Isn't that what Julia needs?

"What would it mean to grind the whole sculpture down? If the stone is David, and you sand the stone down to dust and wash it away, scrub it all clean..." Julia's cheeks are flushed. Her voice is rapid, hungry. She leans back, reaching, and picks up a syringe. It's impossible not to notice that this one's full. She turns it in her fingers a few times, and her heartbeats feel seismic. Rippling through the floor, into you.

She holds the needle out, placing it against your neck. You hold your breath, stilling yourself. Making yourself a perfect target.

"Could do it. You're gone, aren't you? The old you, the original. Why not just finish the job?" She's musing. She's not talking to you, she's talking to a ghost. Someone who stopped coming out of the tank long ago. "We both knew that's how it had to end. Right? You knew." 

Maybe there was a point when you'd have felt fear, but that's been excised. Now, you just feel longing. You don't know if Julia's trying to talk herself into it or talk herself out of it. It's murky, and you can't tell what Julia needs, and that's frightening. So you default to the thing you know best - wanting her to indulge. Take what she wants. Take everything. Consume, remove, destroy, erode. You want to push your neck forward onto that needle. You want it to perforate every inch of skin. You want to inject your tongue and suck the poison from it. You want to bury it in your fucking heart and die for Julia, truly and really, forever. Because she needs it.

But she pulls it away. 

"No," she says, very quiet but very final. "No, that's not right." A little grin teases the corner of her mouth. "That'd mean the game would be over, wouldn't it? And it's not over. Not yet." She takes a breath, cleansing herself of that moment, and stands up. "There's too much of you left. Too much we've got to work on. So let's do that, shall we?"

She gets you to your feet, and you nod. She points you to the tank, and of course you get in. You'd do anything for her.

You get into the left side.

You get into the right side.