Hi there! My name is Goo, or Cy, or Sebastian. I use a lot of names, but it's all
the same person!
Today, 02/21/23, I figured I'd write a fun autobiographical story about what it's
like inside Idiot Corp, which is what I call the inside of my brain.
I'm diagnosed with OSDD-1B, which means there are multiple 'personalities'
of different people, all of us living under the same brain. We can all perceive
the world at different times, with different outlooks and thoughts but all retain
the same stream of consciousness.
I'm considered the 'host,' as we're pretty sure I'm the first one here. ( 'Pretty
sure' here means I have the longest chain of unbroken memories based in
this reality, but I still have difficulties recalling some things. )
'I' is used to refer to Goo, me, since I'll be giving you the tour- and the
document will be in second person. I hope this is a helpful insight as to what
life looks like for us! Sorry you don't have much input in this story. It's real
hard to do this with feedback, so I hope you don't mind being dragged from
place to place!
-
Envision, if you will, that you're standing in a large purple dome.
In front of you is a large, glass screen that looks outwards to the real world.
Right now, it means you're looking at this document screen on my laptop. My
cat, Ray, is on the cat tower beside my bed. Every so often, I'll reach over you
and grab at a lever on a control panel in front of you. It sort of looks like the
control panel from the movie Inside Out. Pulling down the lever, you watch
the arm of the body we're inside of, lift up a bag of chips and eat some.
"I like chips," I comment, smiling. "Salt and vinegar especially. This is the hub
room. We call it 'The Front.' Anyone who comes up here counts as being 'in
the front,' which means they have access to the control of the body. I'm up
here the most! I have a house in the neighborhood, but I really don't go back
there unless I'm in distress or really tired."
When you turn away from the window, you see two reading nooks on the
back wall, with a sliding glass door between them. I take your hand and start
walking into Idiot Corp proper.
It's not night time right now, but you get this map anyways. Besides the door
leading to the Front, there's no visible exit from the neighborhood- It's
surrounded by rolling green hills on all sides.
To our left is a dirt lot, covered in traffic cones- There's nothing there,
seemingly. To the right, is a large building with a MOTEL sign.
"This is the temporary housing," I say, pointing at the motel. "If anyone in the
system has a loved one they'd like to see, we're allowed to bring them here
as a guest. It's also where permanent residents stay when they're new. So
far, only James and Bee have been permanent residents who stayed there at
first."
We continue onwards, onto a lake at the center of the valley. Despite it being
daylight, the water is dark blue. I lean down and splash some water at you.
You're suddenly hit with a wave of nostalgia, and you see an image of a pink
walled bedroom with a red 3DS in your hands. This isn't your memory, it's
mine, but this is the lake's purpose. It's for memories. I don't say anything
here.
I splash you again. You can see an art classroom with pokemon drawings
littered around the walls. This isn't my memory, now either. It's Hassel's. He
lives in the second house we're going to look at. Right now, we're going to
take a right around the lake and over to the right side of the neighborhood.
We walk to house #7 on your map. This is Kyoko, Cas, Tib, and Daisy's
house. It's a tall, three story cottage with walls covered in ivy leaves and a
giant red-leaved tree in the front lawn!
Kyoko is in the front yard, waiting for us. She waves.
"Hello."
"Hi!" I say, running over to hug her.
Kyoko is like the mom of the headspace. She hugs me back and looks at you
with a passive smile. She's a tall, dark-haired, Japanese woman with purple
eyes. Oh, and her teeth are sharp and pointy.
"It's nice to meet you. Obviously this is a story that's being written with no way
of predicting who's reading this right now, so if we've met- It's good to see you
in here," she laughs, opening her front door, and welcoming us inside.
I dart inside and take my shoes off at the entrance, and usher you to do the
same. It's polite after all! The entrance of her house is warm and welcoming,
the walls are painted a nice, darker orange, and the trim of the walls are
black. There's a fish tank in the hallway, but it's empty.
"In my source world," Kyoko starts, taking her shoes off as she enters, "This
is where we keep our pet lobsters, Pumpkin and Sweetheart. But it's a bit
difficult to keep up care for lobsters in a headspace, so we've just settled for
keeping the tank."
"Is th'tourist person here?" You hear a southern accented voice call from your
right, before a head of red frizzy hair pops out from behind the end of the
hallway wall.
"Yeah," Kyoko responds. "I figured we should do our house first since we're
the 'original' people, quote unquote."
"Yeah, yeah, 'course," The man says, nodding. "I'm Guy– Err- ah… Tib. I was
just workin' on some lunch, if y'wanted."
He's taller than Kyoko, with a heavier set build and red frizzy hair and green
eyes. I nod excitedly.
"Yes!! Food!" Despite being a chef, I love it when other people cook instead of
me. I like to taste everyone's food. He hands us two bowls of macaroni and
cheese. You bite a spoonful of it and it tastes like nothing. This is in the brain,
after all. He laughs.
"Yea, sorry. We don't actually cook all that much round here. Not much use
for it. But it's a good dish, isn't it?"
"IS THE PERSON HERE?!" You hear a third voice call before you can get a
word in edgewise, and a man with bird wings on his back flies down the stairs
barely visible on your right, followed by a medium sized brown rabbit.
"Cas, slow down. You're gonna bruise yourself up," Kyoko says, with an
exasperated smile on her face. "You too, Daisy."
"I'm ok!" The rabbit says, in human words. Regardless of how you feel about
that, she hops over to Tib and jumps into his arms, then onto his shoulder.
Cas on the other hand, gives a bright smile and slings an arm around Kyoko's
shoulder. He's a darker skinned man with light brown hair and a gap in his
front teeth. Freckles dot his face, and he has blue eyes.
"C'mon. I'm more resilient than that!" He laughs.
"Sure," she responds, gently putting a hand over his face.
"These folks," I say, stepping to motion around them "Are technically the first
four headmates I formed! Kyoko was first, Cas was second, Tib was third,
and Daisy– well she's technically fifth, but she lives with everyone here
because she's Tib's daughter, in essence!"
"Close enough," Tib says. Daisy gives an affirmative nod.
"Well, that's Kyo's house outta the way! I'll leave y'all to it!" I smile and exit
back outside. You follow after me, waving goodbye to the four people inside.
"We won't be touring the houses, just meeting the people and seeing the
entrances of their house. Everyone needs privacy, obviously!" I say, as we
walk past the lake again. "We're going in mostly numerical order now, so that
means house #1 on your map is up next."
Even as we approach it, you can notice how odd it is that there's half of a
Japanese bullet train sticking out of the side of the red-painted house.
We curl around the side of the house and walk up the stone steps. Right
before I knock, I turn to you.
"Everyone who lives in this house came at different times, but they're all from
the same 'source', as it were."
You look at me.
"Oh! A 'source' means that before they came here, they existed somewhere
else. This house is full of people from Pokemon games!"
I grin and knock on the door. A man with black and white striped hair opens it
almost immediately and raises a pierced eyebrow.
"'M from more than Pokemon, y'know," He prompts, with a Scots accent that
I'm unable to convey through text. I laugh.
"Well, yeah, sure but that's where you first originated from! Don't deny that!
This is N-"
"Niro Piers Hellebore," He cuts me off and shakes your hand. He has
snake-bite piercings, freckles by the dozen, and one blue eye and one green
eye. "Nice ta meet you."
You nod, and he leads you into the more western looking house. Two
archways lead to both a kitchen on your left and a living room on your right.
There's a staircase in front of you, and I'm right behind you by the front door.
When we turn to face the living room, you notice two more men sitting on the
couch, one laying against the other's shoulder, the other reading a book.
They look over to you and wave.
"Hello there," The one with the book says, a middle aged man with blonde
hair and yellow eyes. "Welcome to the house. I'm Hassel. It's good to see
you."
The other, a man with dark green hair, seems to be half asleep. He waves an
arm at you.
"Brassius," He responds, before seemingly falling asleep on Hassel's
shoulder. I laugh a little, and take a few steps into the living room to knock on
an oddly shaped sliding door protruding slightly to the left of the couch.
"Non! Wyb! You're up!"
You hear a confirmative noise before the door slides open and out pops two
twins with a black and white motif to them. One of them seems to have a
permanent smile, and the other a permanent frown. The latter doesn't seem
upset, however.
"Hello," the one dressed in black says. He's got grey hair that points down at
the tips and grey eyes. "I'm Noni. Happy to meet you at this station."
"And I'm Wybie!" The other says, energetic. His hair points up, like the
corners of his mouth. "Nice to meet you! Nice to meet you!"
"Sometimes, people here will go by their source names, like Hassel and
Brassius, or they might go by something different, like Noni and Wybie," I
explain.
"Right. I'm Ingo in our source world." Says Noni.
"And I'm Emmet!" Responds Wybie. Everyone talks at a regular volume, and
Brassius is still asleep.
"Alright alright. Old man is sleepy," Niro says, leaning against the archway.
"Ye met all of us, now shoo."
"Where's the hospitality?!" I whine, nudging his arm. He grins at me.
"Not here. Ye'll find it someplace else."
"Well, that's not entirely true," Hassel says, not looking up from his book. "It
was still good to have them here."
"See? Even Hass's shoo-in' ye out."
"I am not!" He says, flustered, looking up from his book. "I'm just trying to
read!"
Noni and Wybie laugh. They both wave us goodbye and exit through the
sliding door again, presumably to the train on the side of the house.
I turn and smile at you, slugging Niro in the arm again for good measure
before taking you back outside and across the road.
"Now, I'm sure this next meeting will be a little intimidating, but I promise you,
Genny is harmless!" I say, as we approach a large black hole in the ground
the size of a college campus.
It's fascinatingly large, and seems bottomless, even as we approach. I lean
over the edge and cup my hands around my mouth.
"GENNYYY!" I shout. "WE'RE HERE!"
With no sound, a pair of cyan eyes appear in the void, with the irises turned
red. The eyes are conveyed through scribbles, almost as if it's a drawing. On
your left, a large claw pops out of the darkness, the same color as the depth.
Then another to my right. Then a large being with horns made of smoke pulls
its top half through the hole. It is large and towering, nearly the size of the
nearby skyscraper.
"Hello," it says, in a soft voice. "Nice… to meet you."
"Its name is Gensuke, but I call it Genny for convenience. Not a lot of people
can say 'Gensuke'," I say.
"Not… many people can say X
Y
R
K
S
B
Ã
,
either," It responds, with a garble of
noises that don't mean much to you, "So it's okay."
I laugh. All you can do is give a small wave.
"Genny is eldritch in nature," I explain, knowing that this is a lot. "Its purpose
here is to sort of… provide a worldly context to everything, I think. Everything
is so big, so our problems can feel small!"
"I suppose that is what I'm here for," Genny chuckles. "I like to sit down here
and contemplate. I can compress myself to your sizes in order to fit in the
Front, but I prefer it here."
"Okay! Well, sorry to bug you!" I shout. "We're gonna go see Sal now!"
"You never bug, Goo. Only interrupt for a moment."
I laugh and nudge one of the claws before it retreats back into the hole.
"Everyone else is normal sized," I say, leading you away from the hole, "But
their appearances might still be a little fantastical. That's the cool thing about
the headspace- everyone can be themselves, and if that happens to include a
skyscraper sized void creature, we can accommodate that here!"
You're a little dazed as I lead you to the little hut marked #3 on the map. It's
painted beige on all sides, with a roof painted blue with clouds.
"This is Sal's house. Sal is short for Salmon or Salvadore, depending on what
day you ask him!" I say, knocking on the front door. The house is barely the
size of an outdoor shed.
The door swings open, and there stands a pale-skinned man with slicked
back black hair. His true eye color is obscured by the yellow and pink glasses
that sit on the bridge of his nose.
"GOO!" He shouts, taking both my hands and shaking them up and down.
He's a shorter man, about half my own height ( 5'7"), but the grin on his face
takes up about half the space.
"Hi Sal!" I say, enthusiastically. "I brought the tourist."
"The tourist!" He whistles, shaking your hands the same way he did mine.
"Wowza! I've heard so much about you and/or your arrival was really
sudden!"
I laugh, leaning on the door frame. Behind him, you can see his house is
painted with the same theme as his roof, blue with white clouds. There's an
old dial telephone hung on his wall, and a red hammock strung from the
ceiling. You smile at him.
"Sal's our salesman- one of the guys with energy."
"I'm flattered!" He laughs. "Well, I have the energy and the skills for sales, but
not the energy to continue this conversation! Goodbye, tourist! Goodbye
Goo!"
I laugh as he gently pushes me away from the door and closes it. It makes an
almost cartoon-like slamming sound as it does.
"He doesn't mean anything by it, I promise! A lot of us get low energy really
quick, and in his source world, he used to literally run on batteries. So now
we're off to Mahi's house!" I cheer, motioning you to continue following me
back to the lake then up the path. We take a left, towards a Japanese
inspired tea hut with red windows.
I give a gentle tap to the wooden beams next to the paper sliding doors, and
it opens soon after. A Japanese man with short black hair and an eyepatch
over his left eye answers.
"Aye, welcome, Goo and Guest," He says, leaning on the wooden beam I'd
just tapped on. "Th'name is Mahi! Now, don't let Goo fool ya, I'm technically
the third person to exist in the system."
"Meanie," I say, sticking my tongue out at him and taking a seat on the lifted
porch. "He's right, but only kind of. Kyoko was the first one, but when Mahi
formed, it was before we properly understood that we were actually a system.
AND! Plus, you went to sleep before we made that discovery properly."
"Y'got me there. But I was technically the third person to live here, make no
mistake!"
"You didn't live anywhere! We hadn't even established Front as a place yet!"
We stick our tongues out at each other. Mahi gives a loud, sharp laugh, and if
there were birds here, they'd startle because of how loud it was.
"Alright alright, ya scamps. Get out! You've got other places to visit," He says
after a moment, nudging me off the porch. I hop off and motion for you to
follow. You turn back and wave to Mahi, and he waves goodbye back.
"Now, our next place is kind of odd- When I drew this map, it didn't have a
label because we didn't know what it was. The one time I tried to enter, it just
showed me a bunch of snippets from Pokemon battles. But when James and
Honeybee showed up, they sort of made it their house, so now it has an
interior. Welcome to The Cave, I guess!" I ramble as I lead you to the hole in
the hills.
James is already waiting for us. He's dressed in scientist apparel, black
gloves and a white lab coat with frizzy green hair and round framed glasses.
"Well, it took you long enough!" He comments.
"We're going in left to right order," I respond. "If you wanted to go earlier, you
could've said!"
"I was being sarcastic," James says, rolling his eyes. "I don't care what order
you go in."
I blow a raspberry at him.
"This is Dr. James," I say. "He's here with his partner, Honeybee."
"You called?" A woman with pink hair and antenna sticking out of her head
pokes her head out of the cave entrance. She spots you and gives a wide
smile. "Oh. Hi there. Ignore James. He can be a prick."
"I was being sarcastic!" James answers, throwing his arms in the air. "Does
no one get sarcasm anymore?!"
"You lived on your own for fifteen years. I think your tone needs working on,"
Honeybee responds, tugging on his ear.
"These two are our newest arrivals. Every time we get a new member, Kyoko
and I say that this is surely the last one, but it seems like we're wrong each
time. It suuucks."
"We didn't choose to be here," James retorts.
"That was sarcasm," I respond with a grin. James gives a groan and walks
into the cave. You can't see much, but it looks like it's intended to be that way,
as he disappears in a veil of darkness not one foot into the cave.
Honeybee laughs.
"Well. Nice to meet you! I'm going to go cheer him up. Have a nice rest of
your tour!" She chirps, retreating her head back into the darkness.
"Well, that's them! Now- I think this is probably the part of the tour you're most
curious about-" I start leading you to the large office skyscraper that's back
down the path a little.
"The office!"
A tall, windowed skyscraper stands before us, at least twenty stories high. It's
not labeled with any branding, and looks mostly vacant. You can barely see
through any of the windows save for a select few.
The front doors on this building are motion activated sliding doors, so we walk
in without having to knock. The interior is surprisingly typical of what you'd
see in an office building, if you've ever entered one. We're in a waiting lobby,
with an empty receptionist desk, with two elevators on either side of it.
I walk up and ring the bell at the desk. I don't call any names, but as soon as
I've rung the bell, the elevator on the left and right open. Out step two people,
on the left is an older man with slicked back grey hair and a green dragon's
tail, and on the right is a plain looking man with brown, buzz cut hair, and a
plain collared shirt and tie on.
"Hi." says the latter.
"WELCOME!" says the former, theatrically bowing. "And welcome to the Idiot
Corporation's head office!"
I nudge you. "He's lying. This is just his and Stanley's building. We don't work
here."
The man with a tail blusters, frustrated about his secret being revealed.
"Wh- Well- Well I! How dare you! You revealed the trick! You little cheat!
Stanley, he ruined it!"
The other man, Stanley, bursts into uproarious laughter, leaning on the
counter.
"It's kind of easy to tell that it was a lie. You can't even see the inside of the
building from most of the windows. That should give away that most of it is
fake."
"C'mon Xerxes," I say. "This tour is supposed to be about the people, not the
location. I wasn't seriously about to let the touring person think that you were
my boss or something."
Xerxes huffs and marches over to Stanley's side of the desk, where he puts
his forehead against the other's shoulder, pouting.
"Stanley, he's so unfair to us." He bemoans. Stanley pats his head and
continues laughing.
"Sure. If anything, he just saved the rest of us from a fifteen hour improvised
monologue about the history of workplace buildings or something."
Xerxes makes a gasp.
"Get out!! All of you! I will be burning my manuscript on that topic
immediately!" His tail lashes around, annoyed. Stanley gives an amused grin.
"Nah. I'll stay here to make sure the building doesn't burn down. Nice to meet
you, tourist."
Still laughing a little, I escort you out of the office building.
"Don't worry, Xerxes isn't actually mad. He's just a drama queen sometimes."
Whew! We're finally back to the right side road. Three more house visits to
do! I give you a grin as I lead you up the only hill visible in the valley. There's
a bright pink house on top, almost like it's straight out of some sort of cartoon.
The front door is a nice shade of blue, and when I knock, a little jingle chimes
on the other end.
"Now, don't be startled by the resident's appearances here! It's a little jarring,
but you'll get used to it," I say as the door opens.
"Get used to what?" A dry British voice calls. When you look over, a red mop
on a human body with two eyes on top of its head is looking at the both of us.
"Hi Bear!" I chime. "I just wanted to make sure the tourist was ready to see
you."
"Well, If they've seen Gen, then I don't think us guys here are the most
jarring, huh?"
"Probably not!" A shorter looking puppet-like being shaped like a duck speaks
up, coming around the side of Bear.
"Roland, alright, that's two of us. Where's the third?" Bear asks.
"Right here!" Says a round yellow puppet with an orange nose."Hello!! I'm
David."
"And that's three of us," Bear says. "Him, and him, and me."
"Really?" I groan. "You're the first people to do a self reference."
"Well, then that makes us unique. Don't groan!" Roland says.
"Goodbye!" I say, ushering you back down the hill. The laughter of all three of
them rings until we're at the base.
"Their source is from a web series called Don't Hug Me I'm Scared,"I explain,
as we pass Kyoko's house again, "I figured they could have a better life here
then they did in their original verse, so that's why they're here. I think it's
helped."
"They're still jerks," I say jokingly, as we turn to the final house before my
own.
Renju and Pewter's house is something of an outlier- starkly monochrome
and modern looking, with a sand zen garden out front.
I make sure we both step carefully on the stone path leading to the entrance
way stairs, before I knock on their door.
"Ren!! Pew! Answer!"
"On my way!" A man calls. You can hear footsteps from the ceiling above, an
overhand that covers the porch. When the door opens, we're face to face with
a blonde man with square black glasses.
"Goo! You hardly ever come to visit, so I'm assuming this is for the tour?"
"Hey, hush up! It's you who never comes to front, you know that's where I am
most of the time. But yes, that's right." I turn to you. "This is Renju Okiura."
"Oooh, last name too, huh? I'm special," he says, laughing.
"Ohhh just shut up!" I nudge him. "Where's Pewter?"
"I'm back here!" Another voice calls, before a taller man with short grey hair
rounds the corner. He's sporting green visor glasses that look hi-tech.
"Pewter, at your service. No need for my last name," He says, wrapping an
arm around Renju's shoulder.
"These two are scientists! I swear, if the brain of this body was smarter, they'd
be able to build cloning machines and maybe even a machine to separate all
of us!"
"Slow down, now," Renju says, putting a hand up. "We're not that smart."
"Speak for yourself," Pewter says, laughing. "I'd be doing all of that,
resources provided."
"Show off."
Pewter laughs loudly.
"Wellll, in any case, you two just interrupted a date night. Thanks for visiting
though. You should do it more often when we're not busy."
"I gave you a notice that the tour was today!" I huff. Renju laughs.
"Pewter's just a disaster who can't read."
"Rude-ass!" He bickers back, pulling at Renju's face.
"Alright, time to go!" I say. "Have a good date, you two!"
"Alright, alright. Goodnight!" Pewter calls.
"Gooshnight," Renju says through a pulled mouth.
"Well, that's everyone in idiot corp! We're going to go to my house and then
we'll end the tour. I really hope you liked meeting everyone," I say. "I think, as
we're walking to my house, I can tell you a little bit about me, personally. If
you don't wanna read anything introspective, we can call the tour quits here
and you can close the tab, yeah? Thanks for reading!"
It's night time now as we walk along the dirt road.
"So… you're staying. Thank you! See, I was home alone a lot as a kid- and
even before that I always felt a little lonely, even with other people. This really
isn't anyone's fault, I had hard working parents who worked to provide for me
and/or my siblings! But I needed friends to keep me company. So I started
pulling characters from shows I watched, and talking with them like they were
real people. Of course, I never really 'saw' or 'heard' any of them, nothing like
that. But it mattered to me because it always felt like I wasn't alone anymore."
"So I'd talk with them, and they'd go places with me that I was scared to go
to. Like swim meets, or school, or the mall when I was just with one other
person. But everything was all 'imaginary.' I was only ten, after all. I was only,
eleven- twelve–"
"When I hit thirteen, I figured something must be wrong. Well, not wrong, but
there was something immature about being a kid about to enter high school
and still having imaginary friends. I tried to stop interacting with them. But
they were persistent presences. I'd tell them to go away, then go about my
business around my house, then all of a sudden, one of them would tell a
joke, and I would laugh in response, and they were back again. Again, never
heard a thing externally. It was all 'imagined.'"
"When I turned fourteen, I stopped trying to fight against it. Mind you, through
all of this, the forms the people would take would all change based on my
interests at the time. So every time I got really invested into a new show, the
cast would join me in my life. Eventually, I started allowing them to move my
body- experience the way I tasted things, even talk, sometimes, but only
when we were alone. Like we usually were."
"Then something special happened when I was fifteen. I got into a specific
show, and for Kyoko's sake, I won't name which, but I got very attached to
her source character. He was different from any other character I'd brought
into my world before. He stayed longer than anyone else from the show. So I
started writing him down in stories and roleplays with help from him, showing
me how he might react."
"Well, eventually, he– she, now, stayed so long, helping me write- even
helping me through darker times in my life- that when I was about to turn
seventeen, I asked around on online forums what could possibly be
happening to me for her to stay, for her to interact with the world around me
like she was also a real person. Obviously, I take online advice with a grain of
salt, but the answer was nearly unanimous; She's a fictive."
"So she named herself Kyoko and slowly, painfully slowly, we began to
understand that we were a system. She was the parent, and I was the child,
but sometimes it was the other way around. One day, she got lonely, and
asked if we could allow her boyfriend from some of the writing we'd done to
live in the space with us. And we did- and suddenly, there was Cas. Then
came Tib. Then Xerxes– Daisy- Noni- Wybie–"
We come up onto the fading red painted steps of my house.
"Well, that's really how it ended up going- more people, more space! And now
we have a neighborhood, full of life! I think it's fantastic, and I'm happy to
have everyone."
I open the screen door and sit down on the couch right next to the entrance.
You sit down next to me.
"Thanks for listening. I hope that wasn't too rambly. Thanks for visiting Idiot
Corp!"
