InsaneJournal

Realizations (narrative)
The facts were impossible to ignore. And there was no longer any denying them.

Amelia might have been able to pass of the meeting off Mr. Spock. Someone from far away, and likely from the future. And that rude Irish man in the park, who claimed to be a leprechaun. She might, might, have been able to excuse the fact that she'd not only met someone by the name of John Watson, but had also met a man named Sherlock Holmes. A man that acted every bit the part of the man in the book she'd once read.

All those things might have been possible to invent a logical explanation for. Surely Mr. Holmes and Mr. Watson (who had never told her if he was a doctor or not) could be considered a coincidence. Perhaps Mr. Holmes had only grown to the man he was because he had the unfortunate name of a character that made him strive to be like him. And neither one of them seemed like the literary counterparts she was familiar with. There were plenty of ways she could explain it off.

Until she took his advice.

He had told her to learn how to use a computer. One of the girls at the library had been happy to explain all about the "web". It turned out to be easy enough. Move the little arrow over the colored circle, press a button, wait for the screen to change, then type in a phrase to search for it. Perhaps it was a little too easy, considering how much she found out. Things she could never unlearn.

A search of her name told her that her journals had indeed been published. It was her dream that all she and her family did would be preserved for history. There was just one problem- her journals were published in books labeled as fiction.

Fiction.

At first, she thought there was some mistake. Amelia located one of the books, and the author very kindly explained that the manuscripts of Amelia Peabody were well organized, to the best that the author could properly put them together. Apparently, there were some volumes missing, etc., etc., making it all sound quite legitimate. Amelia could have let it rest there. Taken the author's word for it and just let it go. But she was far too interested in facts and far too stubborn to do so. So she looked up Mr. Spock. She searched "Irish leprechaun Sweeney". Soon there was no denying it.

She wasn't real. None of them were real.

Amelia was someone conjured in the imagination of someone named Elizabeth Peters. So was her beloved Emerson, her son, all their friends...

She walked to her kitchen, pouring herself a tall glass of whiskey, wondering if she actually liked whiskey or if it was what Elizabeth wanted her to like. She took a big gulp, then shook her head. Was this how it was going to be? Was she going to question everything she felt and liked or disliked because someone else had originally planted that seed the way a parent forms their child's future?

She slammed the glass down, whiskey sloshing out of the glass onto the counter as she broke down. The sobs racked her as she tried to come to grips with the idea that she wasn't a real person. Damn this City! She cursed it for bringing her here, for forcing her to realize such a fantastic truth. It stole her from her home, her family, her life, and now she knew it had all been nothing but an illusion. And the City stole that, too.

At last the sobbing began to subside. She took a long drink of whiskey, then let out a deep breath. A look of determination came into her eyes.

No more. She refused to pity herself. She was real. She may have been made up, but that didn't make her any less a person than anyone else. Amelia only knew one way to be, and that was herself. And maybe, just maybe, the City was the best thing that could happen to her after all.

At least she was among her own people here.

She put took another drink, then set the glass down purposefully and grabbed her purse. There was a whole City out there, one that Elizabeth Peters certainly knew nothing about, and couldn't influence. It was time to start living her real life.